Alan Flashman

Dayenu 2024

DAYENU

ENOUGH 

2024

 

We have lost

Our capacity to say

Enough.

 

The long years 

When we had nothing,

No land, no state,

No security, no military,

No economy, barely a cent;

Yet each year

We would sing together:

Dayenu- 

It could suffice.

 

But today…

 

We have

 Restored our language

And our land

But have not said,

Dayenu.

 

We have

Come together

From the far corners of the earth,

Built cities and kibbutzim,

But did not say,

Dayenu.

 

We have

Returned to Jerusalem.

Rebuilt her glory,

But did not stop to say

Dayenu.

 

We have 

Sown and reaped,

Drawn water from sea and stone

But neglected to say

Dayenu.

 

We have

Used our ingenuity

To start up

And even exit, 

Without pausing to say,

Dayenu.

 

We have

Fought for our lives

Defeated our foes,

But never said,

Dayenu.

 

We have 

Rebuilt our Torah

With countless scholars,

But when did we say

Dayenu?

 

We have not sufficed

For ourselves.

 

We did not love our neighbor

Enough.

Our compassion for our needy was not

Enough.

We did not cherish democracy and equality

Enough.

 

Nor did we say 

Too Much

To Profiteering

To Domineering

To Manipulating

or 

To oppressing

Another people.

 

We who have not said 

Dayenu

For our blessings

Now cry out

Dayenu

From our curses.

Hebrew version https://docs.google.com/document/d/19BUTmBfvuzYf720C9mmvEC9HHWHJefcLXpM_ax0zuHM/edit

About the Author
Alan Flashman was born in Foxborough, MA, and gained his BA from Columbia, MD from NYU, Pediatrics, Adult and Child Psychiatry specialties at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Bronx, NY. He has practiced in Beer Sheba since 1983, and taught mental health at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University. Alan has edited readers on Therapeutic Communication with Children (2002) and Adolescents (2005) in Hebrew, translated Buber's I and Thou anew into Hebrew, and authored Losing It, an autobiography, and From Protection to Passover. He recently published two summary works of his clinical experience (both 2022) Family Therapies for the 21st Century and Mental Health in Pediatrics and a short novel in Hebrew "NO WAY!" about the abuses of "parental alienation" in Israel.
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