Dayenu! What do you mean it would have been enough?
Had God taken us from Egypt and not judged them, it would have been enough...had He taken us to Mount Sinai and not given us the Torah, it would have been enough...had He given us the Torah but not taken us to Eretz Yisrael, it would have been enough...
I've never really understood this song - I mean, many of these verses just don't make sense. Had God taken us to the Sea and not crossed us over then it surely wouldn't have been enough - we'd have been massacred on the beaches! Similarly, had He taken us to the desert and not fed us the Manna, well, we'd have starved. And had He brought us to Mount Sinai and then left us there, what exactly would we have done then?
Two ideas have occurred to me to make some sense of this - I'd love to know what you think...
One thought is that this song is to bring home the idea that nothing is absolute in the obvious sense. God wants a relationship with the Jewish People, and He took us from Egypt in order to form the foundation of that relationship. Everything that came after could have happened or not, but the essence of our mutual commitment would be unaffected.
Sometimes we get hung up on one aspect of our observance, on one particular idea or principle of faith, and here we are reminded that in theory at least it could have all been totally different. Perhaps God would have taken us out of Egypt in another direction, given us different mitzvos, and taken us into Malawi...the fact is that it would have also been fine!
This song is a reminder that God makes the terms of the contract. His Will is really the only absolute here but how He expresses it is in some sense contingent. There's nothing intrinsic about any particular leg of the journey beyond the Exodus. Nothing inherently holy about Mount Sinai, nothing inherently holy about Israel. Even the Torah could have been expressed differently, in a different language with different mitzvos.
That's not to say that they're not binding in any way - once God did choose the way He did, that's the only way we know with which to approach Him. The point is to remember that that's exactly what all these things are: media through which we relate to God.
Another idea: the mitzvos of the Seder are designed to help us tell the story of the Exodus. This isn't a learning seder, but a story session. Young or old, simple or scholarly, all of us need to tell and hear the story.
There's a world of difference between a mere narration of events and a story. In order for a sequence of events to be a story, there has to be a beginning, a middle and an end (ah - now I know why I needed to go to school!). There has to be some problem that engages our emotions, an increase in the tension and then a release that comes from solving the problem.
Giving thanks to God can only happen by way of a story. Truly feeling grateful requires us to live the struggle and then relish the redemption. The point then is that the story of the Exodus is just that: a story.
We could see it as just a sequence of events but we'd be missing the point. Every stage of the journey is a story in itself - every landmark that we reached was by way of obstacle, struggle, and then redemption.
It would therefore be enough to dwell on any particular aspect, and truly engage ourselves in the story, to bring us to a true appreciation of God's Redemptive Power.
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