Dear Friends,
As I move toward retirement and prepare for this next chapter—making Aliyah to Israel—I’ve been reflecting on the many sources of learning and inspiration that have shaped me over the years. In the coming weeks, I’d like to share a few of them with you.
The first is a podcast called Call Me Back by Dan Senor. In it, Senor interviews remarkable scholars, journalists, and thinkers, and each episode unfolds as a thoughtful, open conversation. Over the past year and a half, before each major holiday, he has spoken with Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023 and subsequently murdered by Hamas. Their most recent conversation, just before Passover, was particularly beautiful and insightful.
There is a portion of that podcast I want to share with you here, but I do so with the broader encouragement that you take the time to listen and subscribe to the podcast. It offers genuinely meaningful perspective, especially in this moment.
“Dayenu,” Goldberg-Polin taught, “means it would have been enough…
And after each stanza or each line, it will say, that would have been enough. And of course, we all ask ourselves, really, it would have been enough? It says, you know, if God had just taken us out of Egypt and left us in the desert, it would have been enough.
Like, that sounds kind of weird. Really? Or if God had just let us wander for 40 years through the desert, it would have been enough.
If God had taken us to the Promised Land but not let us cross over, it would have been enough. And, you know, when you deconstruct that, you think, really, it would have been enough? That doesn’t sound like it would have been enough.
And of course, what the powerful, beautiful message of that is saying, how do we stop where we are and acknowledge what we have is actually a blessing?”
She continues:
“… I think there’s something about Dayenu that is, if the whole entire Seder is a gratitude training seminar, Dayenu is sort of the theme song of how are we able to look at our lives and not see what’s missing but see what we have.”
(From Call Me Back – with Dan Senor: The WHY of this year’s Passover – with Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Mar 26, 2026)
“Look at our lives and not see what’s missing but see what we have.” I cannot think of a more powerful lesson, or a more profound spiritual challenge, than that.
Wishing you all a meaningful Pesach.
Rabbi Daniel Cohen