Just Admit It

In the Torah view, the single most essential ingredient of a person’s fitness to hold a position of responsibility is his ability to accept responsibility. There is no greater disqualification for leadership than one’s unwillingness to say the three words, “I was wrong.”

It works the other way, too: Someone with a conscience that impels him to accept blame when justified is also likely to feel unable to stand idly by when wrongs need righting, and will more readily volunteer to step up to act and take responsibility.

The Kli Yakar explains that Yaakov Avinu’s blessing to Yehudah of “Your brothers will concede to you,” meaning that his would be the shevet of kingship in Klal Yisrael, was a reflection of Yehudah’s own concession so many years earlier that Tamar was right and he was terribly wrong. It is not coincidental that Dovid Hamelech, the personification of Jewish royalty, is also the paradigmatic baal teshuvah (see Avodah Zarah 4b).

The self-mastery that it takes to own up to failure is the strongest indicator that a person, if given the opportunity, will exercise mastery over others in a benevolent and just way. Rav Moshe Shapira ztz”l observed that the phrase “avid inish l’achzukei b’diburei,” which states the halachic presumption that a person would rather double down on his words rather than recant, uses the words “avid inish,” hinting that such a person is a slave to the need to live in the fantasy world of perfection. By contrast, he said, the Aramaic term for changing one’s mind and conceding error is “imlich,” sharing the root of melech, for such a person is truly king over himself.