“With Apologies to Bart Simpson” Rabbi Slipakoff’s 5786 Family Yom Kippur Sermon

Rabbi Dan Slipakoff
Yom Kippur, October 2, 2025 
Temple Israel of Boston 

 

I grew up watching The Simpsons. Anybody else?

One of Bart’s many go-to catchphrases was “I didn’t do it.”

Something breaks? “I didn’t do it”
A note comes home from school? “I didn’t do it”

In one episode, Bart gets caught on camera saying the line, and it catapults him to celebrity. Suddenly, the whole town of Springfield is using “I didn’t do it” as a playful way to avoid taking ownership.

But here’s the thing: the life of a one-liner celebrity wears on Bart,
and so does the hollowness of the denial.
After a while, it’s not so funny.
He sees that living life on “I didn’t do it” isn’t fulfilling.
Because when we deny responsibility, we also deny ourselves the chance to grow.

Let’s be honest: it can be hard to take responsibility. Why?
Because sometimes we think we might get in trouble.
Sometimes it’s easier to point the finger elsewhere.

Sometimes it’s easier to point the finger or pretend you’re the one who got hurt when you caused the problem.
That makes taking responsibility tricky — but it’s still the right path.

Deflecting responsibility is upsettingly common in our world today.
But it isn’t a new problem. The Torah gives us one of our most well known examples.

In the beginning,
In one of the first moments of human decision making we see,

Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad.
What’s the problem?
God told them not to!

God asks them “Did you eat of the tree from which I had forbidden you to eat?”
Kids, this is a parenting move.
Sometimes we ask a question that we know the answer to,
as a little opportunity for honesty and accountability to speak up.

No such luck in Eden.

So God asks what happened, what do they say?
Adam says, “She made me do it.”
Eve says, “The snake made me do it.”
What does nobody say?
Nobody says, “I made a mistake.”

And what happens? Adam and Eve are sent out of the garden —
Yes because of the fruit they ate,
But perhaps as importantly, because they refused to take responsibility.

There are lots of times we learn what to do from characters in Torah
But there are as many, if not more, examples of learning what not to do from their mistakes.

Some people say that our own personal teshuva is part of a collective journey
To bring humanity back to Eden, or at least a more perfect, peaceful place.

Our tradition says there are three layers of teshuva — three directions in which we must take responsibility:

• With ourselves. Owning our choices and learning from them.

• With one another. Repairing the hurt we’ve caused to people around us.

• With God. Returning to the values and the holiness that guide our lives.

These three are connected: if I won’t admit my mistakes to myself, I can’t make things right with others, and I can’t fully return to God.

Kids, I want to talk to you directly for a moment.

Taking responsibility doesn’t just mean admitting when we’ve messed up.

But it also means recognizing all the good things you’ve done.
When you help a friend, when you study hard, when you clean up without being asked — own that too! Be proud of it!

Have you heard someone say “your actions have consequences?”
I say it to my kids all the time
Yes, mistakes have consequences.
But so do your achievements.
And you should carry those with pride.

 

And to the parents here: this work is not just for our children.

They learn most not from what we say, but from what we do.
Our children notice everything. They see how we act when we’re happy,
and they see how we act when we’re stressed.
They hear how we talk to them, and they also hear how we talk to strangers,
neighbors, even to ourselves.

Sometimes we imagine we can “code switch” — behave one way around our kids and another way when they’re not looking.
But the truth is: they are always watching and listening.

That means if we want our children to take responsibility, we have to model it.
When we lose patience and snap, or when we realize we could have handled something better, we need to be able to say out loud: “I made a mistake, I’m sorry, here’s how I’m going to try again.”

That’s something I am working on for this year – the repair.
I know I am going to make mistakes,
But can I acknowledge it quickly, and turn the moment into growth and learning

When we act towards teshuva, our children see that mistakes don’t make us bad — mistakes make us human. And the way we take responsibility can make us holy.

And there’s one more layer I want to add.

On Yom Kippur, when we confess, we don’t just say I lied, I hurt someone, I made a mistake. We say “Ashamnu, Bagadnu” — We have missed the mark. We have sinned. We have fallen short.

Why do you think we do that?

Because what each of us does affects everyone else. If one person refuses to clean up their mess, the people around them get stuck with the hurt.

But if one person steps up and says, “I did it, I’m sorry, I want to make it right” —
the whole community is lifted up for the better.

Teshuva is not just for Yom Kippur.
One of my favorite teachings from the mishna is from Rabbi Eliezer, who said
Do teshuva on your very last day.

Rabbi Eliezer’s students asked him: But does a person know the day on which will be their last?

The rabbi said to them: All the more so this is a good piece of advice, and one should do teshuva today lest they are gone tomorrow,
and by following this advice one will spend his entire life in a state of return and repair.

What if we made this a habit? What if our families, around the dinner table or at bedtime, could ask: Who made a mistake today, and what did we learn?
And if the kids can’t think of one, maybe the parents go first.

Making reflection a habit reminds us that teshuva is not just once a year — it’s a way of life.

On this Yom Kippur, let’s take responsibility — each of us, for ourselves, for one another, for our community.

Let’s not only confess in prayer, but live this in practice: talking honestly about our mistakes, learning from them, and making repair.

May our homes and our families be places where responsibility is not feared, but embraced — where every mistake is a chance to grow, where every achievement is named with pride,
and where every day holds an opportunity to return, to begin again, and to do better.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.