KLM: Dayenu the Heart and Soul of the Seder with Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

[Music] base of midrash for klm right before lael seder die die die dai what a beautiful melody who doesn't remember when they're a little kid singing this or myself a big kid still singing it it goes straight into our heart and we know dayenu by heart but what if our heart knows dayenu do you hear this we know it by heart we know the melody but if our mind and heart fully engages to tell you the truth i cannot exaggerate what a difference it will make it'd be impossible in fact i would like to say that your yatzer hara will not want to hear this okay it's going to ruin it because see the yates are hot rod takes advantage of what we call easy mitsubish and dayenu is right there in the it's a it's a mitzvah we'll discuss and he takes advantage because he'll just get us lost in that sentimental beautiful tune and not recognize the incredible opportunity so we're tonight we're going to reveal the depth of dayenu and i like i said i think that when your mind and heart fully engage dayenu you're not going to believe the impact so let's get started this is what we'll do first we're going to talk about what is the purpose of dayenu right in the lil seder in the haggadah what is the purpose of dayenu that's number one after that after all this is the kavanagh the mitzvahs foundation klm we're gonna reveal hidden mitzvahs there are hidden mitzvahs in dayenu so that'll be part two first we'll understand what is dayinu4 why did they put it there then we'll go to the mitzvahs in dayinu and as a special treat i hope you'll feel it's a treat i'm going to sing a song of dayenu about the anu that's what we're going to do right now okay let's start with what's the purpose of dayenu now here's the first question i want to say dayenu it's a beautiful song it gets across themes of pesach but you know there are other ones how about me so what happens in the seder and in the haggadah you go into the heart of the haggadah you start out with the four sons and manisha and you get into the deep sukim et cetera et cetera et cetera at the very end we have the pu team the the holy beautiful putin so my question is doesn't dieno belong at the end maybe that leads off maybe it's before i got ya but why is dayenu really in the middle of the gada we haven't even said hollow yet and you have dayenu there what's it doing there that's the first thing we have to understand and the truth of matter is there's it's a major locus there's two views and each one can help us so much to appreciate diana okay so if you understand why something is placed in the location it is again we said it's in the middle basically towards the end of the haggadah but the middle hull seder why not put it with the songs at the end that's our question so if it's here in the middle why um what came right before it okay and what can't comes right after it that'll help us this is actually a a a way that we derive torah insights it's called darshaning smikut right it's done in the humish etc here the the commentators say dayanu must be a follow-up of what just proceeded or it's a lead up to what's to come all right let's first discuss what came right before dienum so this is a part of the haggadah that maybe some people struggle with and they go through on the quick side because what happens after we interpret the four verses uh um that describe the yitzias mitsreim we get to the s or mock coat right the astra marco so there that's easy dom sorry and we're busy with the wine dipping the wine next to the uh the different makos what happens next well there's these long paragraphs of tanayim um having debates about well was it 10 in egypt and 40 and 10 at the sea or was it 40 in egypt and 10 and 250 there's this complicated discussion how many makos were there right and they bring verses etc now that section uh at first glance is a little hard to connect to right it's much easier to say the ten makos you have some visualization there what were they doing well if you look carefully these were the tanayan that were staying up all night they said myself eliezer and benebrach and mentions the rabbis there and they're the ones what were they doing all night until krishna in the morning so the commentators explained this is the the haggadah shows you this is what they were doing they saw that um what hashem does there's much more depth and breadth to everything hashem does when we say there are ten makos right there was ten categories of makos that is indeed true however if you look more deeply and you look more thoroughly you can find that within those ten were many more so their picture they had a picture of what hashem did that was incredible and i want to illustrate this the difference between their pe their seder and if we just stay with ten michaels let me illustrate this for you what were the rabbis doing all night so let's compare it to this everyone remembers when they're a kid the dot-to-dot drawings let's say if let's say it's a two-year-old so his little dot-to-dot book would have this dot and this dot okay and then this and this and then he goes like that that's one picture of a face on the other hand if it's an older kid right so then you might have this this this this this this this this this this okay now you join this here join this here and you see there's more of a picture there now i'm not exactly uh van gogh here but you get the idea that the more the more dots the more pixels the more definition the richer picture you have of a kaddish boroku so if you just look at something in a general way you have a general picture you have a general intimacy with hashem and his providence but if you see more details you see more of hashem's providence and that's what they were doing in benebrach and guess what that's why uh later that's why dayenu follows the the author of the gutter says we should learn from these great rabbis who spend all night coming up with more and more refined uh pictures and definition of what was taking place and now we're we're going to thank hashem let's let's draw out not just general things he took us out of egypt and we came to israel let's bring out 15 different gifts and revelations of his providence so that's what elaine is doing if we're going to depict the miracles and details now let's thank hashem in detail so that's the first position the first explanation why die eleno is where it is it's fal it's following suit with the the great rabbi's rich view of what took place in egypt now let's consider the other way and this will lead us to uh the hidden minces in a second the other view says why is the dayenu positioned where it is what comes after dayenu hallel and as we've said many a shear at klm we use rabbi miller's beautiful understanding hollow's not merely praise it comes from the word yale which means wild it means deeply enthusiastic and wild praise you're thrilled with it so now the richer details and the 15 gifts when you when you go through them and celebrate now you're going to praise hashem with enthusiasm so either way or both ways we understand dieno is positioned to help us jump into a richer view of god and and have much more enthusiastic praise than if we didn't appreciate dieno that way clearly we see that dayenu is all it has to do with gratitude that's that's clear it's either appreciating the gratitude richly and setting us up to praise this is why we'll see that dying in a certain sense is the icker is is part of the essence of the whole a famous question is asked and that's this how come if you're going to distraught fulfill the midst of super yitzia smith's rhyme and tell your kids what happened uh wouldn't you think the best location is parshas schmos where it details the slavery and then let's go to the next part of the era where it has the vivid details of the ten makos now why is it that the baalhagata did not use those verses instead where do you go devarim parshas kitavo there's four verses that describe in very brief the it's eastman's ryan there why there so rav yitzhak brodianski explains because what's the context there be what happens a person is thrilled that they live in eretz israel and they have produce and fruits and they go to the base of mcdush with a basket of fruits and then and what it what's the purpose they want to say thank you to hashem now what are they required to do to say well shem it was a bumper crop and it's you know even shemitah no anyhow what would you expect they just thank hashem for the fruits no they go back all the way to arami avadavi right what laven tried to do and it go they they're supposed to recount the whole you'd see a smithsonian to appreciate where we started where we got there so that is in the mitzvah gratitude you tell about mitzrayim that's us you could look at seder as bringing fruits to hashem to thank him for for our lives and that's why we do it there so dayenu which is you know hashem if you only did this dayenu that would be enough etc it's the essence in a certain sense now i have a beautiful surprise for you and now we're moving we fi we finished with the purpose of diana and lael seder now let's go to what we always like to talk about is discovering mitzvahs discovering opportunities and here's something that i think we really need to appreciate and that's this i don't know any job in the world and any employer that pays you for thinking pays you to think now i'm not talking about a think tank which has to produce research and results we get paid for what we think now i i think that deserves a dayenu now with the dieno structure right if you had only done this i would still have to thank you for profusely dianu and now you also did this right so now let's just think about getting paid for mitzvahs at all getting a reward from missus you know you could say that serving hashem is to pay for room and board room and board in this universe i mean we get to live here and eat here and drink it should be just okay for room and boards uh you do mitzvos but no no that's not that's not the case now say it like this if hashem only paid us for mitzvahs with my seem die enu for example you okay you get a reward because you take money and you give it to a poor person that we understand but if we also what also does he do we get paid for our speech die a new in other words when you encourage someone or you make a blessing you're paid for your speech isn't that beautiful but now think about this this is what's so incredible we are paid even for our thoughts in other words hashem will reward us and bond us with him through the kedusha of a mitzvah for our thinking and in this case he says hashem says when you remember things when you're mindful of what i did for you you get mitzvahs i'm going to give you mitzvahs for thinking about what happened isn't that incredible now we're gonna see there's actually four mitzvahs four big mitzvahs all all of them torah commandments in dayenu so now let's move to that four big misses in dayenu so what by the way as always they say um you can shoot me an email we'll send you this post or we'll post this poster this can really bring your seder knight to another level and it will be preserved for eternity the first is here let's look at um indiana the four missiles let's just first look at them zechariah now we know that twice a day we're obligated to remember leaving egypt we know there's a lal seder but did you know it's called the mitsubish that every time you think about mitzrayim hashem pays you for it hm wants you to be thinking about miss ryan all the time it's just not an obligation it's a missile when you do it okay next and this rabbenu yona brings in shiva and the safer haradem and this is little not as well known we have a mitzvah hashem in the midbar and that's the basis for us to have gratitude period if we're supposed to remember the kindnesses he did for avas and the midbar all the more so uh for us so here we go zechariah dayenu contains that right third mitzvah zechar mohammed harsinai it is so important to remember the that the torah comes from akaddish boroku and his divine guess what there's a mitzvah derisive to remember this rambam says at least on a daily basis and again any time you think about the giving of the torah on sinai you have a mitzvah finally the fourth one in dayanu this isn't a mitzvah remembering it's a mitzvah of yearning yearning for the base of mgdosh okay now as we said before as we said before dayenu is is about the details a rich thing so what what do we have here is we can actually see that when i tell you think about mitzrayim you may have a vague picture of leaving egypt right but we want a rich one with lots of pixels and definition so hashem didn't just take us out of egypt he brought upon them 10 plays destroyed their false gods he gave it look at this look at this rich detail you have so much to think about and diana is outlining it for you so you can do zekker let's just mitzrayim and koreasyam so if you know you're supposed to even envision yourself as crossing the sea it's all here alluded to in dayenu so you not only fulfill it you fulfill it richly the same thing with the host hashem in the midbar he didn't just take care of us in the mid bar he did it miraculously through mon and guess where we got the mitsoshabas kodesh the midbar look at these beautiful details to celebrate and each thought is a mitzvah daraisa zechariah mohammed harsinai again there's two aspects to that of course we got the torah but you know there was never a unity greater a jewish unity than when we camped out before hashem and her senate there were amazing things so again we can do the mitzvot richly finally right we enter israel we get the base of migdash and it's also missing this is a mystery caballa to yearn for the base of mgdosh look at all the opportunity and dayenu you have it have it in mind and then use these reach rich details to really fulfill it this can be a model for the year and we're just going to close with the song of dying about dayenu after that journey here's a song of dayenu about dayenu if dayenu only had the mitzvah of rem remembering it's yes mitzrayim revealing the central miracles for us to reflect upon daiyenu and if daino only had the mitzvah of remembering the miracle of kriyasyam suf which includes the obligation to see yourself as crossing daiyenu dai dainu dai dainu dai and if dayenu only had the mitzvah of remembering the gun aiden like existence hashem gave us in the midbar daiyenu and if diane only had the mitzvah of remembering muhammad harsinai the divine event that no other nation has ever claimed and if dayenu only described our entry to the land of eretz israel a land overflowing with mitzvah opportunities and if dayenu only mentioned the base on mgdash which enables us to fill the mitzvah of yearning for its rebuilding dai nu dai dai nu dai dainu so before you recite this beautiful song make sure to have in mind all these mitzvahs and you will have created for yourself an incredible amma bathroom remembering ytzis mitzrayim remembering kriyasyamsuf remembering the kindness as the midbar remembering mohammed harsinai and yearning for the rebuilding of the mgdish le shanahabi ruse okay [Music] is