Embracing Failure

In a remarkable prison letter from the late twentieth century, a man reflects on the strange gift of having everything stripped away. He writes:

“…there is nothing like experiencing failure to give you a more intense understanding of responsibility—that is, if you manage to open yourself to it wholly and without prevarication—as responsibility for one's self.”

This man was Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), the poet, playwright, dissident and the former president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic. 

Havel wrote these lines from where he was imprisoned in May 1979. He spent nearly four years there behind bars. He was sentenced by the communist regime at the time after his involvement with the “Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted,” an organization that was not violent in nature and mainly documented unjust trials and arrests.

I was privileged to direct Havel’s brilliantly written, semi-autographical Vanek plays for a couple of theaters in L.A. back in 2011 and 2012.

Havel wrote around a hundred and fifty beautiful, philosophical, spiritual and poetic letters to his first wife, Olga Šplíchalová.

In letter 138, which I quoted from above, Havel reflects on a personal failure that kept haunting him. Following an interrogation during one of his previous imprisonments, he was asked to write an appeal for his release. This was a routine task which was a part of prison life. Havel used “clever” language to not betray his beliefs, while at the same time not upsetting his captors. To his surprise, they read it as an admittance of guilt and released him. Havel was unable to forgive himself and the preoccupation with this failure tormented him. He blamed his actions on his circumstances and many other causes. In the letter though, Havel realizes that the greatest gift of his suffering was to learn to embrace his failures. It was then that he realized a responsibility was born.   

“I posed the questions, which originated in an unconscious effort to localize the essential cause of my failure somewhere "outside," beyond the borders of my real "I" (the "I" of my "I"), in "circumstances," "conditions," external factors or influences, into some alienating "psychological process" —that typically modern way of excluding the self from the "category of blame." 

Havel’s reflections strongly connect to a question which arises from this week’s Torah portion, Devarim.

Devarim/Deuteronomy opens the last of the five books of the Torah. In Jewish tradition, the book is also called Mishneh Torah, derived from the word Sheni (second) because it is a duplicate, or a copy of the Torah which we have previously read.  

This second telling, however, is repeated from the mouth of a human — Moses. It is being adapted to guide a new generation who are on the verge of gaining sovereignty in their own land.

Our portion and the book of Devarim begin with the following verse:

אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּעֵ֖בֶר הַיַּרְדֵּ֑ן בַּמִּדְבָּ֡ר בָּֽעֲרָבָה֩ מ֨וֹל ס֜וּף בֵּֽין־פָּארָ֧ן וּבֵֽין־תֹּ֛פֶל וְלָבָ֥ן וַחֲצֵרֹ֖ת וְדִ֥י זָהָֽב׃

‘‘These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan; in the wilderness, in the Arabah near Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab.”

Moses begins his very long speech, in which he reminds the Israelites of their turbulent journey through the desert, their different wars and battles, and their failure to trust in God. He reminds them in detail of the sin of the spies who were sent to scout the land, and how the people in the camp failed to trust that God would be with them as they came to conquer the land.

The Slonimer Rebbe (Sholom Noach Berezovsky) asks: Why did Moses’ last speech and his repetition of the Torah not begin with the portion Vaetchanen (the next portion), where the Ten Commandments are recited together with the Shema and V’ahavta? Why start by recounting failures?

He answers: 

"וע"כ התחיל משה רבינו את משנה תורה באלה הדברים אשר דבר משה אל כל ישראל וגו', שמנה לפניהם את כל החטאים שעברו במדבר בערבה וכו' כדי להביאם לידי לב נשבר ונדכה, זה השער הראשון שברון הלב, ממנו עולים מעלה מעלה בהשגת כל המדרגות שנאמרו בספר משנה תורה."

“And so our Lord Moses began the Mishneh Torah with these words that Moses spoke to all Israel, etc., enumerating before them all the sins they committed in the desert and the plain, etc., in order to bring them to a broken and contrite heart. This is the first gate, the broken heart, from which one ascends higher and higher in attaining all the steps spoken of in the book Mishneh Torah.”

The path to wisdom, according to the Slonimer Rebbe, is through a broken heart. He explains that a complete heart, one which is filled with pride, has no room to contain the word of God. Therefore, Devarim first begins with the recounting of failures. 

The Slonimer, just like Havel, believed that only by accepting one’s own failures could one begin to assume responsibility. 

There is no point in beginning by reciting the Ten Commandments if their hearts are unable to contain them. Only when people cease blaming their failures on external circumstances, only when people cease to tirelessly justify their failure as something which is out of their hands, only when people succeed in internalizing their failure as solely their own and breaking their own hearts in the process, only then can the ethical code be given. 

Havel wrote:

“It is not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures, to accept them unreservedly as failures that are truly one's own, that cannot be shifted somewhere else or onto something else, and actively to accept—without regard for any worldly interests, no matter how well disguised, or for well-meant advice the price that has to be paid for it: that is devilishly hard! But only then does the road lead—as my experience, I hope, has persuaded me—to a renewal of sovereignty over my own affairs, to a radically new insight into the mysterious gravity of my existence as an uncertain enterprise, and to its transcendental meaning.”

Perhaps that is why Moses waited until the next portion to teach the Shema. Shema, which means listen. Because only then could the Israelites hear it. Their ears have not changed, their heart has.