Where would we be without our mistakes?

James Joyce said, “mistakes are the portals to discovery”. The American visionary and inventor Buckminster Fuller used to say: "Man is a creature intended by his Creator to learn primarily through making mistakes." And - he would add mischievously - “in school we should give an A to the students who have made the most mistakes, for they are the ones who have learned the most.”

Had he actually appeared to have learned enough from his mistakes, I would have a candidate for the best learner of 5766, who may not have learned enough himself, but helped at least two countries, and in the process, most of the civilized world, become better educated.

I nominate Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. Following the wrenching and pointless war he instigated, he said, on Lebanon’s national television station, ''If I had known on July 11 that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.'' Let me repeat that for you: ''If I had known on July 11 that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.''

Give the man credit for honesty. Now if only he had the capacity to do Teshuvah. Just yesterday, he announced that Hizbollah would not disarm, despite the terms of a cease-fire to which he agreed.

Some people just waste their mistakes.

That he misjudged Israel should not be a great surprise. Others have done so before, often to disastrous consequences.

And others, well, others have gotten us just right. In 2003, at the Tenth Islamic Summit Conference, the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Muhammad Mahathir, resurrected the charges of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, charging that the Jews run the world. His thinking is twisted, and his willingness to ignore reality bordering on pathological, but he gets it. He gets that Israel represents the Jewish people, because it is the land in which our history not only begins, has remained in our hearts and our prayers wherever we have been. He gets that Judaism grew and developed with Israel always part of the equation. He understands, perhaps better than some Jews, that Israel is the one place on earth where Jewish values guide a society. He gets that you cannot distinguish between Jews and Israel, and he makes no effort to do so. And his take on us is surprisingly insightful and laudatory, if unintentionally. He goes on to credit us – or in his eyes, discredit us - with the creation of democracy and human rights. But listen to what he first said about us: “We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking.”

“We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking.”

Guilty.

What Mahathir missed is that the kind of thinking that has contributed to our survival has not been merely about strategizing, but about soul-searching.

That is happening in Israel on a national Level, as we speak – ironically, at the time of year that Jews the world over are engaged in personal soul-searching. Two weeks ago today, 30,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv demanding the establishment of a state commission, and an official investigation has been authorized. This is not a group demonstrating to end a war, as so many of us did during the days of Vietnam. This is, proportionally, the equivalent of 1.5 million Americans demonstrating to demand that senior officials be held accountable for their actions in a time of war. I ask you: what other nation in history has been as self-critical?

That is our lot as Jews. We cannot help it. Mahathir was right: we are a people that thinks. Careful consideration and a slow, deliberate march to judgment are engrained in our culture. That is part of the reason that the response of the nations of the world to the war with Hizbollah was so hard for us. Was Israel wrong to respond as it did? I think not, but the question is an open one, and I am proud to be part of the people who demands that this question be addressed. But there was barely a nation in the world prepared to even examine the facts before it judged Israel harshly and angrily.

The Haftarah for this morning rarely gets as much play as the Torah portion, but it is every bit as meaningful, and includes a foundational story of Jewish aversion to a rush to judgment. We just heard it a few minutes ago, but let me summarize it for you:

Scene 1:

Quietly, Hannah slips away from the festivities. She walks into the Temple at Shiloh, to pray. Fervently she begins to pray for a son, vowing to dedicate him to God. She becomes totally focused on her plea, unaware that her lips move and her body is swaying.

Scene 2:

Eli, the priest, walks into the Temple at Shiloh, taking his customary route through the large space. He sees Hannah, Elkanah's wife. She is swaying, and her lips are moving. Thinking of the festivities going on outside the Temple, he assumes she is drunk and quickly moves to reprimand her.

The world is Eli, and Israel is Hannah.

Alone, challenged, determined, at times desperate, she is intensely seeking to fulfill her own aspirations. A baseless charge is hurled at her without examination, without any interest in looking more closely.

In addition to Nasrallah’s announcement, Hamas announced yesterday, once again, that it will not be part of a government that recognizes Israel. I did not read this morning’s newspaper, but based on repeated previous experience, the silence will likely be deafening.

The world is Eli, and we are Hannah.

There is a third scene in our Haftarah. We can play our part, but it is doubtful that the world will ever emulate Eli.

Scene 3:

Hannah is jarred from her prayer when Eli says, “How long do you propose to carry on drunk like this! Get rid of your wine!” Hannah replies, “Not so my lord. I am a woman distressed in spirit, I have had neither wine nor beer but have been pouring out my soul before the Eternal. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman. All this time I have been speaking out of my abundant sorrow and torment.” Then Eli replied: “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant that which you seek.”

Her desperate plight led Hannah to sneak in to the Temple to prostrate herself to God. Fervently, Hannah lifted her voice in prayer.

It was in this moment of personal intensity that Eli judged and sentenced her. However, rather than slink away when caught, she bravely spoke out in her defense, correcting Eli. One writer shares this thought: “Though she speaks deferentially, respecting convention and social order, the fact that she speaks at all, that she asserts herself and explains herself to Eli, is surely an act of courage” (Marcia Falk, Out of the Garden, p. 98). Hannah's lesson to us is all the more important when we understand how brave she was. And in the end, it moved Eli to teshuvah, as well.

A rabbinic ruling summarizes Hannah's message: “one must not let a false charge to oneself go uncorrected: one must defend oneself and not be apathetic to what others think” (Berachot 31b).

That is true not only for Biblical characters and for nations, but for individuals.

Friends, sometimes we are Hannah, and sometimes we are Eli.

I recently came across a story that reminded me of Hannah and Eli:

Brooke was starting college and moved into her new dorm room at school. She was excited about the prospect of living away from home, studying at the university and most important, making new friends, especially with her new roommate. She arrived before her new roommate and started unpacking. Later in the afternoon her roommate arrived. Dressed in black, carrying very little, she stood in the doorway. Brooke immediately went up to her, offered her hand and said, "I'm so glad you're here! I'm Brooke! It's great to meet you." The roommate said, "hi" walked past Brooke to one of the desks and started to pull things out of her bag. Brooke continued to talk to her new roommate trying to start some kind of conversation with her. She told her where she was from and asked her roommate about her family. The roommate said nothing. Brooke was shaken. She left the room and didn't come back for hours. All she could do was run away and cry, wondering what she was going to do with a roommate who obviously wanted nothing to do with her.

When she returned to her room later that night, there was a note on her bed from her roommate. It read, "Brooke, it was great meeting you. I need you to know that I am deaf. However, I read lips, so please make sure you let me know when you want to talk to me so I can be looking at you. I look forward to getting to know you and hope that we will be great friends."

Sometime we are Hannah, and sometimes we are Eli.

Let’s face it: making assumptions and judging is easier than examining and weighing. We do it all the time. We can learn from our mistakes, especially from bad judgments. Few of our actions have such lasting consequences that they cannot be redeemed.

But what if God judged as we judge?

Everything that Judaism teaches – the reason we are commanded to examine and consider and deliberate before making a judgment, and even then, to judge, in the language of the Talmud, “l’chaf z’chut” – on the scale of merit – is that we are created in the image of God, and commanded to act as God would act – to look carefully, and find the best in every human being.

Take this Talmudic story: The Land of Israel was undergoing a severe drought. Rabbi Abahu, one of the country's most pious sages, had a dream. A voice from Heaven told him, "If you ask the one named Pentakika to pray, then rain will fall." The next morning, Rabbi Abahu sent emissaries to locate and summon Pentakika immediately.

Within a short while, Pentakika came to Rabbi Abahu. "Tell me about yourself," the rabbi requested.

"I'm not much," replied Pentakika. "In fact, you'd probably consider me a lowlife; I'm the custodian of a brothel, and when I'm not cleaning the place up or taking their clothes to and from the bath house, I appear with the hookers on stage and play a drum while they dance and perform. When I'm not doing that, I just entertain them."

"Pentakika," the rabbi urged, "there's more to you than that, isn't there? Are you sure that you never did some very special deed?"

Pentakika scratched the stubble on his face, and pondered Rabbi Abahu's question for a moment. "You know rabbi, there is something I remember: Not long ago, a young Israelite woman came backstage on the brothel theater, crying her eyes out. I asked her why she was so distressed. She told me that the Romans jailed her husband, and that she needed money to gain his release. The young lady barely had money for bread and water; the only way she imagined to raise money for her husband's release was by selling herself to prostitution. I saw that she was an innocent young wife from a good home, so I wouldn't allow her to entertain such a thought. I therefore sold my bed, my mattress, and my pillow, and gave her the money. She arranged her husband's release the same day..."

"Aha," said Rabbi Abahu, "you are surely worthy of having your prayers answered, for your deeds are purest altruism."

Abahu himself may have been quick to judge Pentakika had it not been for what he learned about him.

Too bad God doesn’t come to us in dreams and identify the righteous for us – we are left to examine each person and each nation for ourselves, to make our own mistakes. If we find ourselves, like Hannah, wrongfully accused, may we find the strength to heed the Talmud’s instruction: “do not let a false charge to oneself go uncorrected: one must defend oneself and not be apathetic to what others think.” And if we find ourselves, like Eli, in the role of the wrongful accuser, may we find the strength to learn, and like him, respond, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant that which you seek.”