ed “To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design.” He makes the case that a successful feat of invention depends on a series of failures. Only the commission and addressing of errors, he elaborates, can propel any invention to perfection. “Failure,” Professor Petroski explains about engineering, “is what drives the field forward.”
Errors are part of the project of life itself, no less – a truth bearing heavily on the concept of teshuva.
Among the published collected letters of the late Rav Yitzchok Hutner, the revered Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin from 1940 into the 1970s, is one he wrote to a student who had shared with the Rosh Yeshiva his despondence and depression over his personal spiritual failures.
Rabbi Hutner’s Hebrew letter digresses into English for a few words—those comprising the maxim that one can “lose battles but win wars,” It is a saying, Rav Hutner writes, that encompasses a deep truth. What makes life meaningful, the Rosh Yeshiva explains to his student, is not basking in the sunshine of one’s “good inclination” but rather engaging, repeatedly and no matter the setbacks, the battle against our inclination to sin.
Rabbi Hutner notes that Shlomo HaMelech, King Solomon, (Mishlei, 24:16) teaches us that “Seven times does the righteous one fall and get up.” That, writes the Rosh Yeshiva, does not mean that “even after falling seven times, the righteous one manages to get up again.” What it really means, he explains, is that it is precisely through repeated falls that a person truly achieves righteousness. The struggles—including the failures—are inherent to the achievement of eventual, ultimate victory. If we find ourselves flat on our backs, we must pick ourselves up and resume the war. And, if need be, again. And again.
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are long behind us, hardly at the forefront of most Jews’ minds as snow clouds gather. But thoughts of righteousness, sin and repentance are not seasonal; every day of the year brings its own challenges. And so, approaching the final day of Chanuka, we do well to ponder our stumblings, but, remembering Rav Hutner’s thought, to also temper our anguish over mistakes we have made. To understand that failures, even repeated ones, are integral steps toward ultimate success.
To remember why it is that erasing writing on Shabbos is forbidden.
© 2012 Rabbi Avi Shafran
The above essay may be reproduced or republished, unedited.