Alicia Svigals

NiSh’ma: Dayenu

The fifteen stanzas of the Passover song “Dayenu” depict how we were rescued and then rescued again, and given gifts on top of gifts. But would even that first redemption have been enough, as the song has it? Pausing to appreciate how our road might have forked differently at each point in that miraculous story, we might say that the Exodus alone was already more than we could have hoped for. But, once redeemed, maybe it’s our turn to emulate God. Just being grateful for freedom is, in fact, not nearly enough.