Hope is the New Despair.

This morning, a 20-something, Jewish, McCain supporting, young professional I went to college with had “yes we can is the new dayenu” as her Facebook status. Given her political leanings, I assumed that this was an attempt to take one final and dismissive potshot at the millions of us across America who, almost reflexively, sang choruses of “yes we can” in the same way that millions of Jews, without thinking, sing along with the repeated chorus of the Passover song, “Dayenu.” Through my lingering wine-and-euphoria haze, I struggled to deconstruct this analogy, phrased in the overripe pop culture colloquialism of “X is the new Y,” and identify ways that my former classmate might have taken it up as an expression of her frustration or disappointment with last night’s results.

After some time, I gave up and asked her about it. And in doing so, my faith in Americans’ ability to, at the end of the day, put personal politics aside and recognize priorities greater than their own was reaffirmed when I received the following via Facebook Wall-Post: “Wasn’t anti-Obama at all. I agree with you and that’s why I said it. It was how I connected to what he had to say.” Upon receiving this response I was struck by powerful feelings of pride. Of course, as an Obama supporter and a liberal arts educated, American Studies major who concentrated in Cultural Studies and Civil Rights, these past hours have left me chock full of pride. In addition to feeling proud of the way my country voted, I felt proud of the way my religion, albeit unknowingly, had led my friend onto what I believe is the right side of history. On this historic morning, my friend’s Facebook status was not only a testament to the truly bi-partisan appeal of Obama’s message, but it was also a powerful reflection of the desperation, hope, and faith of the American people as expressed through a casual reference to a relatively small aspect of the Jewish Passover tradition.

You see, on Passover, Jews tell the story of their escape from Egypt and thank God for delivering them from slavery. Towards the end of the traditional Passover liturgy is a Hebrew song called “Dayenu.” It is an upbeat, call-and-response style song where God’s actions on behalf of the Jewish people are posed as hypothetical statements that are then responded to with rousing choruses of the song’s title. Literally, the word dayenu means “it would have been enough for us.” So, for example, the following are among the song’s verses:

If God had brought us out of Egypt … It would have been enough for us.

If God had split the sea for us … It would have been enough for us.

There are several other lines, but that’s the jist. Now, I am neither naïve nor cavalier enough to imply an even slightly analogous relationship between Barack Obama and God, but I was struck by something particularly resonant in the invocation of a tradition that celebrates the end of a dark period in history as the creation of a benchmark against which people are able to realize how truly blessed they are.

The election of Barack Obama is a sign that the American people have made a possessive investment in our own historical legacy. We are no longer willing to accept the continued pursuit of an American narrative that leaves us so grossly and dangerously misrepresented. History, is the catalogue of all of the events, ideas, and moments that make up human existence; and our personal stories are cross-referenced as part of our nation’s whether we like it or not. Last night’s election should be seen as a mandate to those in power that the people of the United States are no longer mollified by the placatory option to symbolically disassociate ourselves from our own history with impotent disclaimers like “not it our name.”

Whether or not we feel the need to qualify any affirmation of the revolutionary quality of this election by reminding ourselves that it took the extreme conditions created by, among other things, two failing wars and an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, to actually catalyze the American people into action, we must not be so jaded as to think that last night marks anything less than a watershed moment in American intellectual history. By electing Barack Obama, by voting as much for his romantic
messages of “hope” and “change” as for his concrete policies, we made it abundantly clear to our leaders, our world, and ourselves that the American people are taking back creative control of the American narrative. While Barack Obama has stirred up in many Americans the belief that last night was only the beginning of a new chapter in American history in which he will lead us through this tunnel of darkness into the light of a truly better tomorrow, we must remember that his message is not a messianic one.

For too long we have allowed ourselves to have our story told for us by hubristic third-person narrators whose omniscience, in classic dramatic form, is fatally flawed by their own recklessly gluttonous self-interest. Last night we announced, by overwhelming decree, that it is our turn to be the authors of our own story. We must encourage ourselves to let our next president serve as a symbolic reminder that in electing him, we agreed to truly put our country first. We have committed ourselves to the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that we are okay with the fact that as our nation’s tide rises, it may lift the dingies and rowboats of those in need more quickly than the yachts and cruise ships of those with plenty. And if we can hold up our end of the promise we made by casting our votes, and take advantage of the power to make real change in our own lives endowed to us through the original tenets of the American Experiment itself, then we should have no doubt that the programs and policies proposed by Senator Obama will come to fruition under the leadership and guidance of President Obama.

But today, even stronger than my anticipation for the upcoming political changes and the brighter future they should bring, is my gratitude to Barack Obama for offering himself up as our symbol. The election of Barack Obama, ripe with the powerful and romantic connotations with which it was so skillfully mythologized, can now replace the horrors of September 11th and the exploitative and destructive way it was deliberately manipulated to trick the American people into repeatedly aligning ourselves in opposition to own best interests, as the defining political moment of this generation. We can, to use what is hopefully the last vestigial bit of the campaign rhetoric that has become so ubiquitous over these past months, re-brand ourselves. The challenges that lay ahead of us as individuals and as a nation are great. But today, as last night’s speech to Grant Park and the nation so eloquently affirmed we understand what needs to be done and we are confident that, by taking the pen into our own hands, we will be able to write the next chapter of the American story in our own words.

If he helped us recognize our own potential … Dayenu.