At teacher in-service this year at Milwaukee Jewish Day School, we discussed and internalized a new understanding of what it means to fail.
Typically, failure has a negative valence. One who fails is not good enough or has not met certain standards in his or her work.
Upon reflection, we realized that failure is not a bad thing. Rather, it is a necessary component to innovation and creativity, reflecting grit, perseverance and curiosity — all key qualities which correlate to a life and lifetime of high achievement.
As such, we re-interpreted what it meant to fail. No longer was failing pejorative. F.A.I.L. is really just a First (or Further) Attempt In Learning.
As teachers, we seek models and examples to demonstrate to our children. In searching for a model of failure, I offered God as the exemplar.
The notion that God has multiple attempts at learning — that God F.A.I.L.s — is neither heretical nor novel. Indeed, the prophet Jeremiah, in chapter 18, is told to visit a potter. There, Jeremiah observes a master crafter who can fix any marred vessel.
God then asks Jeremiah rhetorically if God, indeed, is not unlike the potter and if the Israelite people are not unlike the marred vessel. From this image, it is clear that God’s creation of human beings was not (nor was it intended to be) a perfect one-time act.
In fact, the rabbis in Genesis Rabbah, a rabbinic collection of midrashim, or stories, about the Book of Genesis, are even more blunt.
They taught that God created multiple worlds, destroying each one until God was finally satisfied with the world at hand. Only then did God evaluate creation as “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
What was about the world that God kept, the rabbis ask, that made it worthy in God’s eyes? The previous worlds were identical to the one that God cherished, save one exception.
In the worlds God destroyed, people were created without free choice. They always and automatically obeyed God’s commandments and followed in God’s footsteps. There were no flaws, imperfections or failures. God destroyed these worlds.
Only after God created human beings with the freedom to choose their own paths was God satisfied and content. Despite the objections of the angels, the midrash continues, God looked upon this world with joy.
God would keep the world full of people who have the ability to F.A.I.L., who do not get it right the first time(s), but who persevere and improve.
This is, of course, the essence of the High Holidays. We F.A.I.L. We, as MJDS teacher Tzipi Altman-Shafer pointed out to the staff in a beautiful allusion to High Holiday liturgy, miss the mark. Then what do we do?
We commit to trying again, to being better in the year to come. We repent on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, determined to take another attempt at acting rightly and justly.
We recognize that failure is not defining or embarrassing. It was simply a first (or further) attempt, and we dedicate ourselves on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur to trying yet another time.
Of course, our aim might be more true in the coming year than this past year, or we may again miss the mark and F.A.I.L. But that failure is not to be lamented, but rather celebrated.
Indeed, each time that we F.A.I.L. and try again, we are acting like God the Potter; we are bringing ourselves that much closer to perfection and to God.
In prizing this world above the ones earlier destroyed, God serves for us as the ultimate role model, the perfect failure. We all know that we are created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image. If failure is good enough for God, then we should be so honored to F.A.I.L., as well.
May this High Holiday season be one in which celebrate our failures from the past year and aspire to even greater attempts at personal, religious, and spiritual growth.
Rabbi Moishe Steigmann is director of Jewish Life and Learning and school rabbi at the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
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