Dayenu! Do we ever feel there is enough springtime? Enough redemption? The winters of life and soul suffering seem to come pounding on the shores of our lives like waves that knock us over and pull us into the undertow. But, the sea will soon split, and we will walk through on dry land out of Egypt and towards the destiny of our lives.
Robert Frost wrote:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
But, DAYYEINU! We affirm that golden memories motivate us to fulfill life’s mission with purpose. The Holy One ushered us out of Egypt with gold, and while we created a molten calf we also made a Mishkan, a portabler tabernacle with golden tools. We repented and designed that portable sanctuary as a model for synagogue life for all time. Our golden monuments in the wilderness would forever refract Divine light into our lives.
As Sophia Zalma taught in her bat mitzvah drash, the light shining off the Golden Calf calls us to offer prayers and make atonement, and the light shining from the gold of the special holy tools of the portable sanctuary of the wilderness and the ark remind us of our eternal bonds to God, Torah, and the generations of the wilderness who experienced redemption and were taken out of Egypt in the springtime.
As to finding a deeper message in Frost’s poem, Ziv and I discussed that perhaps we should remember that the leaves – green, gold, yellow, orange or absent – are an extension of the tree’s entire lifecycle and holy pursuit of survival and growth. Let’s see Eden as a glorious model of how we could accept the cycles of our lives and experiences of living and sing out “Dayyeinu!”
Enjoy the children of Or L’Atid singing Dayyeinu here:
https://youtube.com/shorts/llut_nlZYmU
Shabbat Shalom and Hag Pesah Kasher v’sameah,
Rabbi Bolton