D is for Danger and Dayenu

D is for Danger and Dayenu

A philosophical giant with a sordid philo-Nazi past, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) once declared: "Where is the danger, there grows the saving power also." Heidegger, like Hitler, sadly diagnosed the danger of inter-war years Europe in the Jews. The Jews that were allegedly sapping German, Aryan national "being" through internationalist ideologies such as liberalism, social democracy, and socialism. Heidegger later became a darling of the European left and post-modernism, the pro-Nazi writings conveniently explained away as mere aberrations.

Heidegger was supposedly a deep spiritual thinker in an age that had killed God. Yet, as men and women eternally search for meaning, we needed secular replacements to give us hope. Sadly, I must say as a political scientist, that those hopes for mass redemption came in the form of totalitarian ideologies that resembled what Emilio Gentile called "political religions": Fascism, Nazism, Leninism, and Stalinism. We had killed God and found new gods in the charismatic leader, nation, race, or class. The consequences were dangerous, dark, and an attack on the spirit, soul, and bodies of men and women. The gulags and the concentration camps were the logical conclusions of our 20th century political experiments that sought to create totalitarian, perfect orders where Truth was known by a select few.

What are our contemporary dangers? And how is this related to the Hebrew word "dayenu"? Well, dayenu means "it would have been enough for us." It is a mantra that is chanted in song by Jews during Passover. It is in the hagaddah, which is read during the traditional Passover seder. In the song, Jews give gratitude to God for taking them out of Egyptian slavery, giving them the Sabbath, and the Torah. It is a tune of gratitude for life, existence, our being, community, and God. Had God given the Jewish people one of these aforementioned gifts, the up-beat song says it would have been enough. There are 15 stanzas to dayenu, all with different gifts God bestowed upon the Jewish people. The 15 stanzas are divided into three sections: gratitude for leaving slavery, miracles of God, and being with God. It is a lovely song with one fundamental meaning: Gratitude for life as an awesome, mysterious spiritual project.

Dangers today are many: an environment torn asunder by human greed, an economic crisis that challenges the foundations of our economic system (though nobody on the right or left really wants to say it), the decline of direct democracy, a rising tide of militant Islamism, raging wars, and a spiritual chaos that leads people to value the trinity of money, power, and technology as the secular lords of our age. As in the inter-war years, the dangers are many. And like in those dark days, we have fanatics like Ahmadinejad in Iran, al-Bashir in Sudan (wanted by the International Criminal Court for his role in the genocide in Darfur that has killed 300,000 and sent 2.5 million into exile), and even on university campuses from Toronto to Paris that want the whole heritage of the West and Israel to be extinguished in flames. Left-wing "progressives" increasingly make common cause with Islamists like al-Qaeda in the post-9-11 climate. Dangerous indeed!

There is also a danger that in such times, despite the great hope of Obama, we will want a quick fix of total, all-encompassing solutions that will destroy democracy. We might leap into the arms of despots. Witness the rising political import and legitimization of anti-immigrant political parties in Western Europe since the 1980s from Austria's Freedom Party to Italy's Northern League and France's National Front. There is the danger that established political authorities in the West will further undermine civil liberties in the "war on terror": legal illicit spying on citizens, Guantanamo as the model of the future (Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben), security certificates without charges, etc. The "war on terror" is indeed real, especially for Israelis, Russians, Turks, Sri Lankans, and the United states after 9-11. Yet, we might want to re-conceptualise the "war on terror" to target the larger "war on violence" both at home and abroad. Let me direct you to something I wrote academically on the subject in International Politics in 2005:

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/journal/v42/n2/abs/8800108a.html

Every corner of the world has its own dangers. I have diagnosed some common global dangers. There are also preachers, politicians, academics, and journalists shouting about false dangers in order to incite, divide, and accelerate the "walls of hate" (a phrase I picked up from the legendary blues man Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater). Ahmadinejad is one such figure, who repeats crude anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The sad reality is that some of these theories, in more subtle form, are finding their way to the pages of left-wing columnists such as The Toronto Star's Linda McQuaig. She recently insisted that the decision to ban British MP George Galloway from Canada was the decision of a foreign government: Israel! This despite the fact that, nothwithstanding Galloway's pro-Hamas sympathies, Israel let Galloway into its own country.

Let me now tie dangers and dayenu. Dangers have been with us since the dawn of setting suns. Radical evil is out there in the world and institutions sometimes support that radical evil. Dayenu, however, teaches us gratitude. To wake up with a smile of greeting at the morning sun. To realize that we are all part of the same creation. To recognize that if we demonize one group it is like demonizing all groups. To understand that killing begins in the heart with abstract ideologies of hate and division. To see that the dangers are opportunities to improve ourselves, the planet, its inhabitants.

One does not need to be religious to understand and feel the meaning of gratitude inherent in dayenu. This dayenu is our saving power. Do not believe in the false idols that promise liberation, or false dangers with political agendas. They cheat and lie. Dayenu tells me that the Iranians are my brothers, as are the Palestinians. They will change the world with us. They know deep in their hearts that peace is possible. That two states for two peoples are possible. That they can rise to the task by overthrowing their authoritarian lords. Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad, and the monarchs of the Arab world are relics of a time past. They must go. Dayenu tells me that all individuals and nations ought to be free and self-determining. That democracy is not a bad word or an imperialist ruse, but a treasure that must be expanded. The danger is in forgetting the gratitude of dayenu, in forgetting our common humanity.

Tamir Bar-On