When I taught preschool, one of my favorite books to share with little ones was Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg. The premise is simple but revolutionary: a spill becomes a giraffe, a tear transforms into an alligator’s mouth, a crumpled page turns into a mountain range. The book teaches children that mistakes aren’t failures—they’re invitations to create something new. I watched kids’ faces light up as they realized that the blob of paint they’d accidentally dripped could become a butterfly, that the ripped corner of their drawing could be reshaped into a door.
This lesson mattered most during coloring time. That’s when perfectionism struck hardest. A crayon straying outside the lines could trigger tears. A “wrong” color choice could mean crumpling up the whole page. But Beautiful Oops shared a different message: your mistakes don’t define you. What you do with them does.
But can a person really change? Can someone who has caused real harm (not just a messy picture, but genuine damage) transform into someone worthy of honor?
The story of Joseph and his brothers forces us to confront this question head-on. Joseph dominates the final third of Bereishit. From the dreaming teenager to the viceroy of Egypt, the narrative revolves around him. He seems destined for greatness from the start, and indeed, Jewish tradition knows him as Yosef HaTzaddik, Joseph the Righteous. Yet when we look at Jewish history, we don’t call ourselves “Josephites.” We’re Yehudim, Jews. We carry the name of Yehudah, Judah.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out how startling this is when you consider who Judah was at the story’s beginning. He’s the one who proposed selling Joseph into slavery:
The callousness is breathtaking. There’s no moral objection to fratricide, just cold calculation. He calls Joseph “our own flesh and blood” in the very sentence where he suggests selling him as merchandise.
Yet in the portion of Vayigash, Genesis 44:18–47:2, we meet a different Judah entirely. When Benjamin faces enslavement in Egypt, Judah steps forward: “Let your servant stay as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers. For how can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I could not bear to see the misery that would overwhelm my father!” Rabbi Sacks observes that the transformation is complete, a “precise reversal of character.” The man willing to sell his brother into slavery now volunteers for that same fate to spare another brother. Indifference has become courage. Callousness has turned to compassion.
What changed him? The answer lies in a strange interlude in Genesis 38, the story of Tamar. After Judah’s sons die and he fails to fulfill his obligation to provide Tamar with another husband, she disguises herself and Judah unknowingly sleeps with her. When she becomes pregnant, Judah orders her execution for immorality. But Tamar sends him his own seal, cord, and staff with a message: the father of this child is whoever owns these items. She refuses to shame him publicly even as she reveals the truth.
Judah’s response changes everything: “She was more righteous than I.”
Rabbi Sacks identifies this as “the first time in the Torah someone acknowledges their own guilt.” Not defensiveness. Not excuses. Just honest admission of wrongdoing. This is the birth of teshuvah, the uniquely Jewish concept that a person can return, can change, can become someone new. As Rabbi Sacks writes, “Here is born that ability to recognise one’s own wrongdoing, to feel remorse, and to change.”
The Hebrew root of Judah’s name, yud-dalet-hey, carries this transformation in its letters. Lehodot means both “to thank” and “to confess.” His mother Leah named him in gratitude: “This time I will thank the Lord.” But his name also means “he who acknowledged,” the one who could say “I was wrong.” From this root comes vidui, the confession that stands at the heart of repentance. Rabbi Sacks explains: “Judah means ‘he who acknowledged his sin.'”
The Talmud teaches: “In the place where penitents stand, even the perfectly righteous cannot stand.” Rabbi Sacks uses this to explain why Judah, not Joseph, became the father of Israel’s kings. Joseph was tzaddik, righteous from the start. But Judah? Judah was baal teshuvah, master of return. Joseph became second to Pharaoh. Judah became father to Israel’s kings, ancestor to David, to the Messiah himself. As Rabbi Sacks concludes, “Where the penitent Judah stands, even the perfectly righteous Joseph cannot stand.”
This is what’s in a name. Judah’s name doesn’t celebrate perfection. It celebrates transformation. It honors the courage to face your own mistakes, to let them break you open, and to build something beautiful from the wreckage. The spill becomes art. The tear becomes possibility. The sin becomes the doorway to greatness.
