“Joel’s Story” Rabbi Slipakoff’s Rosh Hashanah 5786 Sermon

Rabbi Dan Slipakoff
Rosh Hashanah, September 23, 2025 
Temple Israel of Boston 

Shana Tovah,

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
That’s Bryan Stevenson, the lawyer, activist,
and visionary behind the Equal Justice Initiative.
He has dedicated his life to defending those sentenced to die in prison, challenging unjust systems,
and reminding us of the fundamental dignity of every human being.

It is a noble statement,
born of his work walking with people the world would rather forget.
And it’s also a statement that feels deeply right.
We want to believe that our lives are not defined by our worst moments.
That when we stumble—when we lash out,
when we say hurtful things,
when we fail to live up to our own values—
those moments do not tell the whole story of who we are.

We want the chance to grow beyond them.

And when it comes to those closest to us—
our children, our partners, our friends—
we often do extend that grace.

But as that circle of familiarity grows wider, that instinct grows fainter.
It is harder to extend the same grace to the stranger,
to the person who has hurt us indirectly,
to the people we are taught to fear.

And so here is a tough question:
What if you are defined by that worst thing? 
What if life finds you in a situation
where that worst thing becomes your defining characteristic,
the brand upon your identity,
no matter what comes after?

The prophet Isaiah
gives us one of the great promises of the High Holy Days:
“Though your sins be scarlet, they shall become as white as snow.”
We come to this new year yearning for renewal,
hoping for a blank canvas, a fresh start.
But if we are honest, that’s not how it works.
Our canvases are never truly blank.
We carry the marks, the bruises,
the wisdom, and the growth of everything that has come before.
Teshuva does not erase the past—
it forces us to reckon with it.

Teshuva is a process,
sometimes slow, often agonizing, always demanding.
It requires courage to face who we have been,
and humility to seek to be better.

This morning, I want to share a story with you.
It does not have an ending yet.
And it is not about geopolitics, leaders, or nations.

It is a story about the quest for teshuva
in one of the most authentic ways I have ever witnessed.

With his blessing, I want to talk to you about a man named Joel.
Who is currently serving a life sentence
at the medium security Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Shirley

I met Joel through the Partakers program when I began at TI
and joined the program in 2019.
Partakers matches mentors with incarcerated men and women
pursuing college degrees and education.
Joel had enrolled at Boston College
in their first ever Prison Education Program cohort.

When I signed up, my colleague Tali Puterman cautioned me:
“Make sure you can commit to this. It is not a sprint.”

It’s not a sprint for mentors,
and it is certainly no sprint for those pursuing their degrees.

Team Joel currently consists of myself, Anne Licciardello, and Dan Barcan.
Like the many Partakers mentors in this Temple Israel community,
we took on the responsibility of providing Joel with what therapists call “unconditional positive regard”.
We were not in his life to judge or criticize, or do his homework
but to support and motivate him as he navigates school
and life’s many ups and downs.

One of our congregants and Partakers mentors, Ron Ebert,
explained the relationship beautifully. He wrote:
“One learns many things in this attempt to support a soul –
patience and perseverance are two.
Another, and more important, is seeing the humanity in a kindred human”.

Choosing education is no small thing,
especially while incarcerated.
Nationally, nearly 79% of people released from prison
are rearrested within six years.
But among graduates of the Partakers College Behind Bars program,
the recidivism rate is just 2%.

That is an astonishing difference.
It shows that education is transformative.
Joel’s commitment was not just about earning a degree;
it was about choosing a different path for himself,
rooted in growth and accountability.

In the past five years, Joel has been busy not only with classwork,
but also engaging with and organizing on behalf of his community.

He created events honoring BC Alum and 9/11 hero Welles Crowther,
led a Father’s Day Walk for Peace
in partnership with the Peace Institute’s Mother’s Day Walk ,
and even orchestrated a session for our own Shavuot tikkun zoom
on the value of education and “communities of care”
for incarcerated individuals.

Joel also dedicated himself to building Restorative Justice Circles, opportunities for perpetrators of harm to acknowledge their wrongdoings and center the victims of that harm,
in hopes of moving toward repair and teshuva.

One year ago today, Joel graduated from Boston College.
He made the Dean’s List several times
and received the Social Justice Award
for his contributions to his community.

What a crowning moment for Joel and his two graduating classmates
In their caps and gowns, serenaded by “Pomp and Circumstance,”
cheered by more than 30 currently incarcerated BC students.

In his graduation speech,
Joel spoke directly to his mother and sister seated in the front row:
“I’m sorry for the pain I caused you…
I hope today I have finally made you proud,
that your dream that was deferred has finally been fulfilled.”
Joel was moved to tears… we all were.

It was an incredible moment of being seen
for more than one’s worst action.
It was the best graduation that I have ever attended.

But as soon as it began, it was over.
Guests departed, the tents came down, and Joel went back to his cell.

Joel has spent more than half his life in prison
for a crime he committed when he was 18 years old.
He fully admits his wrongdoing
and has dedicated his recent life to education and restoration.

He yearns for freedom—for a chance to apply his learning and skills
to repair the world he harmed.

Degree in hand, Joel is currently a teaching assistant
for one of his favorite professors.
And BC’s program has grown to 80 students across five cohorts,
becoming the largest higher education prison program in the Commonwealth.
The hard work never stops.

The Parole Hearing

This past December, Joel had the opportunity
to go before the parole board.
This brought a whirlwind of activity—
consulting lawyers, crafting statements,
and preparing a plan of support for life beyond prison.

All of it hung on a question:
“Do you show remorse for your past behaviors?”

We know Maimonides’ five steps of teshuva:
Naming harm,
Beginning to change,
Restitution,
Apology,
and making different choices.

But are those the same things the parole board looks for?

I asked Judge Nancy Gertner—
a congregant, author, and neuroscientist
about parole hearings.
She described them as a ‘formal ceremony of remorse.’
A single performance, burdened with enormous weight,
yet never able to tell the whole story of a life in transformation.

There are no  brain scans for remorse,
no reliable neurological markers.
So parole boards look for tears, tone of voice, or posture— 
but each board member reads those signs differently.
Recognizing remorse is subjective, and fragile.
And it is that sometimes maddening uncertainty
which makes the endeavor so profoundly human

For what it’s worth,
Judge Gertner told me that she believes the truest expressions of remorse are found not in those staged parole hearings…
but in restorative justice settings. 

We were told not to get our hopes up.
Few initial parole hearings end in parole in Massachusetts.
But how can you not have hope?

On December 19th, I arrived at the parole board offices in Natick.
Our team joined Joel’s legal team, his Imam,
Boston College representatives, and supporters
who pledged work and housing if he were to be released.
His family joined via Zoom.

Across the aisle of the hearing room sat the family of the victim:
the mother, two brothers, and a sister-in-law,
accompanied by an Assistant DA.

Then the seven board members took their seats on the elevated deis,
and finally Joel— escorted in,
in a suit and handcuffs.
Only the second time he had left prison in 19 years.
He visibly shook.

Here is a moment where the potential for freedom is so close,
yet before reaching it, you must relive the story
of the worst thing you have ever done.

And he did—with vulnerability and honesty.
He spoke of a challenging upbringing, but without excuses.
He described the crime without blaming others.
He apologized to the victim’s family, to his own, and to the state.

The board grilled him about prison infractions,
about why he sought early parole,
about what was in his mind during the crime.

But they also called him Mr.,
A huge sign of respect for a man
who is used to being barked at by only his last name or his assigned number.

He answered politely, repentantly.
He was heartbroken and sincere.

Then the victim’s family spoke.
For this, I was not prepared.
As they too relived the worst day of their lives.

For some of them,
none of Joel’s good works could undo their suffering.
The opportunities and second chances he had received,
none of it came their way.
Their grief was raw and real.

I walked in thinking there was no limit to the wrongs which could be repaired,
And I left uncertain and shaken.

Does Teshuva have its boundaries?
Is there a limit to forgiveness?

In the months since the hearing,
I have come to the conclusion
that the process of teshuva can exist without forgiveness
though it may feel incomplete.

Our tradition never promises that repentance guarantees reconciliation.
Maimonides teaches that we are obligated to confess,
to change, to repair
but that forgiveness belongs to the ones who were harmed,
and it cannot be forced.

This means there are different circles of forgiveness at play.

There is victim forgiveness, the most intimate and personal,
which only those directly harmed can offer.

And there is community forgiveness,
the broader work of saying: you still belong to us,
you are still part of the human family,
even as you continue to carry the weight of your actions.

In Genesis, when Cain kills Abel.
God places a mark upon Cain,
not to punish him further, but to protect him.
To say that though he is exiled, he will not be abandoned.
Though he carries his crime with him,
he will not be destroyed by the community that surrounds him.

When victim forgiveness is withheld—and that is their right—
the work of teshuva still matters.
It matters for the soul of the one who did harm,
and it matters for the community
that must learn how to hold accountability and humanity at once.

Weeks after the hearing, parole was denied.
Joel can reapply 11 months from now.

Afterward, I asked Joel how the hearing made him feel.
He told me what hurt the most
was that the parole board didn’t believe that he was a truly changed man.
And he continues to worry:
he isn’t sure what else he can do to make them believe.

By Passover, Joel described living in mitzrayim, narrowness.
He has repeatedly rewatched the recording of his hearing,
Alongside others in the parole process
analyzing where he might improve,
offering insight to those about to have their own hearings.

He has been told by the system that he must live
without a single infraction—no demerits, no missteps.

He told me that he wakes each day thinking of his crime
and how to prove his growth.
“Any step off the path could set me back years.
I can never get angry. If I slip up, they will say,
‘See, he’s an animal, he doesn’t belong outside.’”

None of us could withstand that level of scrutiny.
To be clear, I wish Joel’s world granted more grace and margin for error,
No one should have to live under this sort of interrogation,

And I took his reality to heart and looked in the mirror.
What if my own teshuva were measured that way?
Where do I stumble?
Where do I fall short?
Where should we take teshuva more seriously?
And hold ourselves accountable with more persistence?

In June, Joel helped organize the aforementioned
Father’s Day Walk for Peace
in solidarity with the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute’s Mother’s Day Walk.

He later wrote: “Although we are removed from community,
we are nevertheless still part of community.
Therefore, it is an obligation upon us to engage in acts of reparation
to repair the web of relationships we have disrupted.”

They invited Chaplain Clementina Chery,
who founded the Peace Institute after her son’s murder.
She eagerly attended, saying: “I went where God sent me.”

Tina shared with me not only her reflections on that day,
but her view of the justice system itself—
which she sees as a true perpetrator.

Her perspective is always shaped by the human beings involved.
She dares us to ask: “What if this were my child in there—
what would I want for them?”

She challenges people of faith to ask
“what is our role in confronting this reality?”
Not blaming individuals, but exposing the design itself.
the way the system trains people to deny guilt,
sabotages re-entry,
and fails to support both victims’ families
and those who are incarcerated.

And I will never forget what she said at the Father’s Day Walk.
There were no cameras, no reporters present.
And in her remarks, Chaplain Chery declared:
“The peaceful revolution will not be televised.”

Afterwards she told me, “If there were a prison riot,
it would be front-page news.”

Her words cut to the truth: the world pays attention to violence,
but not to repair. 

But you are hearing this story now.
I have brought you closer into the circle.
In telling it, you become witnesses to an unfolding process of teshuva.

Joel made it clear that his life in prison is dedicated to the man he killed.
Every day is lived in service of that memory.
And he longs for the chance to take his life of service into the world
beyond the prison walls

Joel’s story isn’t finished, and neither is ours.
On this Yom HaDin, this Day of Judgment,
I hope the questions raised here force us to reckon with our own lives

Have we offered performative apologies rather than genuine repair?
Have we been content with ritual repentance without changed behavior?
Do we keep our distance from people whose humanity
would challenge our assumptions?

Bryan Stevenson teaches: to do this work, we must get proximate.
“When you get proximate to the excluded and the disfavored,
you learn things that you need to understand
if we’re going to change the world,”

Proximity is the very foundation of Temple Israel’s justice work.
We believe change does not come from a distance—
it comes face to face, In sacred relationship.

And so I invite you to join me and our Tikkun Central community
on Yom Kippur afternoon in a program alongside Partakers.
We will help create “Welcome Home” packages
That will support men and women coming home from incarceration.
These will serve as a tangible expression of our care and commitment to their renewal.

Together, we will get proximate

I am grateful to Joel for entrusting me with his story,
for sharing with me his time and his humanity.
I have learned so much more from him
than I ever imagined when our journey together began.

I recently gave him a copy of the book Judaism’s 10 Best Ideas
To no surprise, his three favorite concepts are:
Teshuva, Tikkun, and Btzelem Elohim.

When we talked about that last one—
what it means to be created in the image of God—
Joel’s whole face lit up.

We use Btzelem Elohim so often it can lose its power.
It can begin to sound like a rehearsed script,
the kind of empty refrain the prophets warned against.
But in that moment, our sacred words were alive and real

This is the holiness we are called to live—
To make space, to listen, and to draw close
until the image of God alive in another soul
changes how we act

There is more story to be written.
For Joel, and for all of us.
To be continued…

Shana Tovah.