Finding the Sacred Invitations within the Mistakes — a Teaching by our Bat Mitzvah
Returning to our practice of reflecting back on the Torah offered at this past week’s Shabbat services, we’re fortunate to be able to share the Torah offered by this past week’s Bat Mitzvah celebrant, Clara.
Clara’s Torah portion was Noah, that foundational story that articulates the ebb and flow of humanity, which, according to the text, “had corrupted its ways on earth” (Genesis 6:12). God, the Torah tells us, “decided to put an end to all flesh” (Gen. 6:13), commissions Noah—the only righteous man of that generation—and his family to build an ark, collect pairs of all the animals on earth, and save themselves from the forthcoming flood, with the intention to start life anew when the flood recedes.
It is at this juncture in the story that Clara noticed something surprising: when Noah finally comes out of the ark, oh so many days after the beginnings of the rains and the flooding, and offers a sacrifice to Adonai, the Source of All Existence, Adonai, smells the pleasing odor and says, “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21).
What Clara helped us understand is that the surprising element of this is that it suggests that God experiences… regret. Or at the very least, a need for a course correction. “How could this be?” Clara in essence wondered aloud for us all. How could it be that a seemingly perfect Being would fail to foresee the consequence of Their actions and intentions? How could it Be that God would make the wrong decision? Could that be possible?
In a word, according to Clara, the answer is: yes. And that, she taught, should be reassuring rather than cause us to wring our hands. Endemic to the construction of the universe, she taught, is the idea that we make mistakes, and inherent within those mistakes is an invitation to, and the possibility of, learning from them. That is the sacred part of mistakes and regrets. Forgiveness, it is often taught, is about giving up hope for a better past. Rather than be in denial about the fact that we don’t make mistakes or have regrets, Clara seemed to suggest that mistakes are opportunities to practice compassion with ourselves and from which we can learn. She asserted that this does not mean we are blameless when we make mistakes; accountability matters. But rather than expect perfection from ourselves, we ride the wave of the human experience, recognize mistakes for what they are: so fundamentally a part of existence that even God experiences them. And that the sacred practice we pursue for ourselves is to learn from them.
Kol Hakavod, Clara. (Kol Hakavod literally means “all the respect” and has come to be the phrase we use in Hebrew for “Wow, great job!”) We are grateful for your teaching this community, and we are delighted to wish you blessings on the next part of your Jewish—and human—journey.
