Passover: Dayenu! You're Enough!
In the article “Good-Enough Holidays,” Catherine Newman writes:
“You can find neither Peeps nor macaroons on your market shelves...You are anxious and exhausted, maybe money-troubled, and the holidays are upon us.”
“Can you stand it if I use the word ‘luckily’ right now? Because, luckily, Easter and Passover celebrate not only renewal and rebirth, but also a certain scrappiness and resilience, a certain indomitability of spirit. Hope and life triumphed over death and fear! We can rejoice in the fact that we are, at the very least, still alive. We can gather however we are able. And we can insist that the perfect not be the enemy of the festive.”
Passover this year will simply have to be what it will be. As Sue Fendrick reminds us, “You do not need to make up for the seder you are not having, or the seder you wish you could have. Do this year’s seder(s) however that works for you this year...Dayenu. That is more than enough” [1] And fortunately, we're not alone. Those celebrating Easter this year will not be sharing in-person meals with family, attending mass, or hunting for pastel-colored eggs. Technically, we're all hunting down eggs this year since there's never any left at the supermarket. Jewish or not, all of us are trying to get into the spirit of tradition, even though none of us feel mentally or emotionally present to do so. Enthusiasm for celebration has waned this year overall.
We're all trying the best we can given that normalcy has been supplanted by a never-before-seen pandemic. We sit down at the computer and Zoom the day away. The irony is that Zoom now makes each day feel twice as long. It's draining. Exhausting. Uncomfortable. And to add to the health crisis at hand, there's simultaneously an unprecedented economic crisis. Millions of Americans have filed for unemployment. And those who haven't now work twice as hard (for probably less money). And when all these ingredients come together like baking soda and vinegar, what we're left with is a heaping pile of psychological disturbances. Namely, guilt.
There’s the guilt of having a partner, roommates, or family to quarantine with. The guilt of making money. The guilt of firing or furloughing workers. The guilt of falling behind on bills. The guilt of saying “No mom and dad, you can’t see the kids.” The guilt of being woefully unprepared for the canceling of the world. The guilt of not being “essential.” The guilt of unwittingly spreading disease. The guilt of not being productive enough (yes, we saw your "reading list" book pile on Facebook). The guilt of having too much free time. The guilt of having too little time for yourself and others. The guilt of being under 60. The guilt of eating frozen pizza every night for dinner. The guilt of not turning the living room into a fully functioning pilates studio. The guilt of not socially Zooming with friends because Zoom is now the devil. The guilt of not knowing how to use Zoom in the 2-second window we gave everyone. The guilt of not being an accredited AP Calculus or Environmental homeschool teacher for your children. The guilt of taking the last box of cereal at the grocery store. The guilt of simply leaving your house! There’s even a BBC article titled “Coronavirus: How To Go For a Walk Safely, Without Getting Shamed.”
There’s so much guilt out there it’s palpable. It’s everywhere you go. Jewish author Andrew Silow-Carroll talks openly about the “survivors guilt” he feels as nurses, doctors, the ambulance drives, paramedics, firefighters, and policers rush into the war against COVID-19. He explains:
“If we are the home front, then they are on the frontlines, facing a harsh reality that we can only glimpse in videos of mobbed emergency rooms and temporary morgues...The contrast between my inconvenience and their pitched battle leaves me with something akin to survivor’s guilt.”
However, while these feelings may be unsettling for him and others, he explains, “Guilt is, of course, a very Jewish concept, and a healthy one if it spurs you to repentance and action, as it should…Many of us may be just ‘civilians’ in this siege, but perhaps it will make us better and more caring citizens.” [2]
And that is why the message this year is this: You’re enough! Dayenu! What you’re doing is enough. What you’re not doing. What you hope to do. What you’ve already done. All of it is enough. Because, as Rebecca Sirbu writes, “Part of what Passover calls us to do spiritually is to loosen the chains of bondage that we put on ourselves. Dayenu! It is enough.” [3] You’re Enough, ALREADY, Let’s Eat!