Some Rosh HaShannah Thoughts

It's OK to fail!!


No, I am not making excuses. I am just asking you to think about things a little differently as we celebrate the new year. There are so many “sub- themes” to the High Holiday season—we speak of the passing of time, the concepts of repentance and forgiveness, and the acknowledgement that our lives really are in God’s hands. The holidays are also about self-evaluation, a task for which we usually make too little time or effort. As we begin the new year I share with you some thoughts about our need for such evaluations.
I have spent the last thirty years studying and teaching about Judaism but I still find it as exciting as ever. Not many people get to say that because after a certain time you can get bored with any job! So why am I still excited? I think it is because I am constantly amazed, intrigued, and inspired by our tradition and the insights that it has about God and man. Our tradition never ceases to surprise me—just when I thought I knew something I have to start thinking about it all over again—so too with the concepts of success and failure.
Our ancient teachers had an amazing gift of sympathy for the human condition- if religion preaches ideas about how people are to be “perfect” what do you say when they fall short? How can any religion (ours included) try to teach and instill moral perfection in the face of human imperfection? (Hence the art of the sermon- a message made to remind you that you aren’t perfect. Maybe the Jewish twist to that idea is… you aren’t perfect yet.) The important part of the message is that you are not free to stop trying! I think that idea informs Judaism’s concept of man. A human being may be imperfect but what makes us human is our determination to keep trying.
So is it a mitzvah to fail? No, not at all. We live in a society that is driven by the idea of success. It might be expressed by the job you have, or the money you make, or the car you drive. Our society is also driven by the idea that failure is bad, if you fail you are second rate, if you fail you must be lazy, if you fail you are “bad.” At Rosh HaShannah we should really confront the ideas of success and failure. In the realm of religion it is about moral perfection (or at least meager progress.) In the realm of our own self-evaluation it is about renewing our resolve to keep trying. Yes, it’s OK to fail, welcome to the human race. It’s not OK to stop trying. As we stand before God we don’t offer excuses (failure) we only confess and acknowledge our humanity. If we do that there is only one place to go—back to the drawing board for another try. Have a sweet year and try your hardest!