One of my mentors once said: “A fool is not someone who never makes a mistake. A fool is someone who does not learn from his mistakes.”
Judaism teaches not only can mistakes be channeled into future success, but they can be repaired as well. On the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, we recognize our moral fragility and the many mistakes we are prone to make in life, but most importantly our ability to repair them all.
The structure of the new Jewish year of 5784 and the reasons for it provide an important lesson on the power of repair in every area of life.
There are two systems with which to set up a calendar. The 29.5-day lunar cycle is the source for the time unit we call "month"; the 365.25-day solar cycle is the basis for the annual cycle of seasons referred to as "year." Most calendars are modeled on one cycle alone but the Jewish calendar follows both. Dates follow the months of the lunar cycle, but the festivals must be in their respective season – Passover in the spring, Sukkot in the fall, etc. So the lunar months must always align themselves with the seasons of the year, which are governed by the sun. Thus, the Jewish calendar is "Luni-Solar." The problem is that these two cycles are not compatible with each other - twelve lunar months add up to 354 days, eleven days short of a solar year. Just a few years down the line Passover can be celebrated during a fierce blizzard and the Chanukah candles lit in a heat wave. To make up for lost time, every two to three years is known as a Jewish leap year. Unlike the Gregorian (and Julian) leap year, in which an extra day is added, the Jewish leap year has an entire extra month, which brings the lunar cycle up to date with the solar cycle, with some extra days for “credit.” On a deeper level, the sun and the moon represent two distinct characteristics. The sun radiates its light in the same constant manner, without perceptible change from day to day. If the sky is clear, one sees the same amount of the sun’s globe every single day. The moon, on the other hand, becomes “renewed” or “reborn” at the beginning of each month. It begins as a narrow crescent, becoming fuller and brighter from day to day until it attains its complete fullness and brightness on the fourteenth or fifteenth day of the Jewish month. Then it becomes narrower and smaller in the month’s second half until it disappears. The sun represents the element of sameness and constancy; the moon represents change and renewal. In Judaism, it is imperative to have both. Just as law without the spirit is uninviting and repressive, spirit without law is flaky and transient. A healthy combination of both the sun and moon elements is a sure recipe for success. And like in the case of the lunisolar year, this combination does not always exactly match up in a fine neat bundle and sometimes we need to “repair” the discrepancies. But we can certainly repair it and even gain extra credit. This is the message of Yom Kippur: the celebration of our ability and obligation to repair everything and then some.