Spot the deliberate mistake?

Today I came across a short piece, “New Year, New Song”, 0n Jewish Link (“Linking Northern and Central NJ, Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester and CT”) by Shira Sedek. There she writes:

We make mistakes, but as it says in Pirkei Avot, a Tzadik (righteous person) falls seven times and he gets back up. We may continue to make mistakes, but are we going to think we can’t change, we aren’t worthy of getting closer to Hashem, or being forgiven? No! We all need to get back up and recognize we are human and sin, ask Hashem for forgiveness, and try our best to change.

No-one would wish to argue with the basic message, but there’s a little problem.  However carefully you read Pirkei Avot, you won’t anything in it about the righteous falling seven times. This is the territory of Proverbs (Mishlei 24:16), which reads:

כִּי שֶׁבַע יִפּוֹל צַדִּיק וָקָם וּרְשָׁעִים יִכָּשְׁלוּ בְרָעָה

For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again, but the wicked stumble into evil.

This left me with a conundrum. Did the author not know the source of this famous quote? Or did she deliberately mis-state her source in order to illustrate the very point she seeks to make? Since the article describes her as a “passionate educator … who loves teaching Torah and inspiring her students”, I would not be at all surprised if the reference to Avot was planted deliberately in order to provoke debate.

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