Reason #25 to VOTE NO on ISSUE 3
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Because it abdicates responsibility and accountability.
The best way for me to explain this reason is to link to this. I'm not sure how long it will be available as a pdf, so I'm also posting it here.
Hakol Talui Bi – Everything Depends Upon Me!
Yom Kippur 5767
Rabbi Stephen Weiss – B’nai Jeshurun Congregation
Pepper Pike, Ohio
Days after the sin of the golden calf, Moses stands again with God on Mount Sinai, and God is angry. Really angry. We can imagine that Moses must have been at a loss for what to do. Moses knows that if he does intervene God in his anger will destroy the people; yet dare he defend the Israelites after they committed such a grievous sin? But as Moses is pondering this dilemma, God suddenly speaks to him: “Hanicha li! Let Me be! I will destroy this people, and begin again, making a new people out of you.”
Hanicha li – leave me be! As if to say to Moses, Go away, I cannot do this in your presence. At that moment Moses understands. God so loves Moses that he alone could stop God from carrying out the destruction of Israel. God was practically begging Moses to intercede. Moses realizes, in the words of the Midrash, that “hakol talui bi – everything depends upon me.” He rises to the responsibility, defending the people of Israel before God and convincing God to forgive them and rescind his decree.
...
Hakol talui bi – everything depends upon me – is also a good motto for us as we face the task of teshuvah on Yom Kippur. Teshuvah is all about taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences. And just as only Moses can intervene to save the people, so only we ourselves can do the teshuvah that saves us from the roa gezera, the harsh decree. Teshuvah is in out hands, not God’s. No one can change us, not God, not our parents or our spouse or any other human being, only we ourselves. Hakol talui bi – everything depends upon us.
Taking responsibility for our actions sounds simple, yet sometimes it is so hard for us to do. Let me give you an example. Friends of mine in a previous community have three sons. They are a shomer Shabbat family. One Shabbat the three sons decided to sneak into the basement to smoke cigarettes. The father wandered downstairs and caught them red-handed. The first son said, “Hey, don’t blame me. I am not responsible. I forgot it was Shabbat!” The second son said, “Don’t blame me! I am not responsible. I remembered it was Shabbat; but I forgot you are not allowed to smoke on Shabbat!” The third son lowered his head and mumbled, “Don’t blame me… I… I….” “Yes,” said his father impatiently, “What did you forget?” The boy piped up, “I forgot to lock the basement door!”
There are times when we are all like that third son. We know in our hearts that we are responsible, but we just cannot bring ourselves to accept that responsibility. Tonight, I want to talk tonight about the times we don’t accept responsibility, and about the impediments that stand in our way.
The first impediment is that sometimes rather than accept responsibility, we seek out someone else to blame for the things we have done. Often we end up blaming the very person that we have hurt. Take Mel Gibson. When he was caught having spewed anti-Semitic slurs at a Los Angeles policeman, he offered this apology: “If I have offended anyone in the Jewish community by my words, I regret it very much.”
In other words, Mel Gibson is not sorry for thinking or even saying what he did. He is sorry that it caused a ruckus because those Jews are so touchy, so easily offended. In essence even as he apologized he was saying it’s your fault not mine. You Jews are making all the noise. I’m sorry I fell into your trap.
It’s easy for us to see the fault in Mel Gibson. It’s much harder to see it in ourselves, to admit that we too play this same game every day. But hakol talui bi – teshuvah has to start with the self, with taking responsibility for our actions.
Second, sometimes the other person really did hurt us, but we still use it as an excuse to avoid responsibility for our own actions, as if our hurt justifies hurting them back. Yet we know deep down inside that hakol talui bi – we alone bear responsibility for what we do. When we are hurt, a better model for us to follow would be that of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Rabbi Carlebach once performed in Poland. He was asked how he could greet, shake hands with --and even hug --children of the perpetrators of the Holocaust and even perpetrators themselves. Carlebach answered, if we had two hearts like we have two arms and two legs, then one heart could be used for love and the other one for hate. Since I have but one heart, then I don't have the luxury of hating anyone.
A third way we push off responsibility is that we sometimes pretend that we do not have control over our actions and our words. Again, Mel Gibson is a not-so-shining example: After his first apology failed to quiet things down, he made this second attempt: “That wasn’t me talking---that was the booze talking.” In other words, because I was drunk I was not in control, so I cannot be held accountable.
But we are always accountable. Hakol talui bi. What is the first Al Chet that we say on Yom Kippur…Al chet shechatanu lifanecha b’ones -for the sin that we committed against You under duress, against my will. If it was under duress, why do we have to atone for it? If I did something because I had no choice, why should I be blamed for it?
The answer is that the first of all sins is to claim that I did it under duress, that I had no control over it. It wasn’t me. It was the bottle; it was the cop; it was a full moon; a bad hair day, or any one of a million other excuses. As long as you claim that it was not your fault, you can never do Teshuvah, you can never truly repent. And as long as you claim that it was not your fault, there is no way and there is no reason why you should be forgiven—either by God or by the one whom you have hurt.
Finally, we may feel sometimes like we simply cannot change, even though we know we should. Let me share a beautiful story with you: I read recently about a fourth grade teacher who was having her students do an unusual assignment. They were writing a list of things they thought they could not do. It was an "I Can't" list. I can't kick the soccer ball past second base. I can't do long division with more than three numbers. I can't get Sally to like me.
The teacher was writing her own list also: I can't get John's mother to come in for a teacher conference. I can't get my daughter to put gas in the car. I can't get Alan to use words instead of his fists.
When they had each filled up several sheets of paper, the teacher had them place their lists in a very large shoebox and she grabbed a shovel and led them outside to a corner of the schoolyard. One by one they all took turns with the shovel, digging a very large hole for the box. It was a grave for their "I Can't" lists. When the grave was ready, thirty-one, ten year olds stood there as they placed the shoe box at the bottom of the hole, covered it with dirt, and listened to these words from their teacher:
Friends, we are gathered here to day to honor the memory of “I Can't.” While he was here with us on earth, he touched the lives of everyone, some more than others. We have provided "I Can't" with a final resting place and a headstone that contains his epitaph. He is survived by his brothers and sisters "I Can,” "I Will,” and "I'm Going to Right Away." They are not as well known as their famous relative and are certainly not as strong and powerful yet. Perhaps, some day with your help, they will make an even bigger mark on the world. May “I Can’t” rest in peace and may everyone present pick up their lives and move forward in his absence. Amen.
The teacher cut a large tombstone out of cardboard and put the words “I Can’t” at the top and “Rest in Peace” at the bottom and wrote the date. She put the tombstone on the bulletin board for the rest of the year, and on some rare occasions when a student would feel defeated and say “I can’t,” she would point to the tombstone and the student would remember that “I Can’t” was dead and buried, and the student would resolve to try again.
How many times have we said, “I can’t?” “I can’t make it to minyan,” “I can’t give more tzedakah,” “I can’t reconcile with family and friends where there has been a falling out.”
God says to us, Bury the “I Can’ts”. You can. You really can change. Just open the gates of repentance to the width of an eye of a needle, and I will open them for you till elephants and camels can pass through. You needn’t come all the way, God says to us, just start the journey. I will meet you and bring you home. I will give you the strength to change. You just have to take the first step; and the first step is acknowledging responsibility – hakol talui bi – everything depends upon me.
On this Yom Kippur we will do a lot of praying. We will beat our chest and ask God’s forgiveness and plead with him to forego any punishment we may deserve and instead to grant us health, happiness, prosperity and blessing in the New Year. We come before God trembling, because we feel that our life is in God’s hands. But God says to us no, it is not so. I place your life in your own hands, hakol talui becha – everything depends upon you, upon your willingness to take responsibility for your life, your willingness to change, your willingness to forgive, your willingness to stand up when you are needed. It is all in your hands.
We would be wise on this Yom Kippur to heed the advice of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: Pray as if everything depended upon God and act as if everything depended upon you. Hakol talui banu – everything depends upon us. May we choose to so live that we bring blessing to ourselves and to all those around us in the coming year.
Proponents of Issue 3 are in the I Can't, or, in this case, We Can't, class of individuals.
They say, We Can't help it that there is no other and no better solution to the higher education affordability problem than to create another 109,000 addicts and give wealthy businesses more wealth while creating an ephemeral scholarship program that appears to have only the smallest of chances of actually helping those students who will most need help.
They say, We Can't help it if Ohioans want to go over the borders to gamble anyway; the only way to stop that is to create the same opportunity to gamble here in Ohio.
They say, We Can't help it if people's breaking point for when they'll stop gambling is low enough that the gambling industry is a lucrative one that happens to create crime and distress, on personal and community levels.
They say, We Can't help it if some people can't control themselves and their inability happens to make us a lot of money.
To those We Can'ts? I say bull.
If the proponents are smart enough to find the tens of millions being used to push for passage of Issue 3, to find people and entities to help do the dirty deceptive work of getting petitions signed, and to turn their heads away every time they see a billboard on the side of bus saying "It's for the Children" and chuckle because really "It's for the owners," they could - if they wanted to - come up with far better ways to make Ohio's students, families, corporations, government, nonprofits and academic institutions solve the affordability problems.
They just don't want to. Why don't they want to? That's for the proponents to answer. I would love to have them explain why they'd rather spend all this time and money and effort to use gambling as a higher education savior, than come up with something like real economic development and programs that rely on holding the institutions, the students and everyone else along the food chain of education responsible and accountable. Because all Ohioans rely on that food chain - for jobs, education and ideas to support our state's growth.
Comments are always open.
Previous reasons to vote no on Issue 3:
Reason 26
Reason 27
Reason 28
Reason 29
Reason 30
Reason 31
Reason 32
Reason 33
Reason 34
Reason 35
Reason 36
Reason 37
Reason 38
Reason 39
Reason 40
Reason 41
Reason 42
Reason 43
Reason 44
Reason 45
Reason 46
Reason 47
Reason 48
Reason 49
Reason 50
Reason 51
Reason 52
Reason 53
Reason 54
Reason 55
Reason 56
Reason 57
Vote no on Issue 3 (Ohio Learn and Earn).
The best way for me to explain this reason is to link to this. I'm not sure how long it will be available as a pdf, so I'm also posting it here.
Hakol Talui Bi – Everything Depends Upon Me!
Yom Kippur 5767
Rabbi Stephen Weiss – B’nai Jeshurun Congregation
Pepper Pike, Ohio
Days after the sin of the golden calf, Moses stands again with God on Mount Sinai, and God is angry. Really angry. We can imagine that Moses must have been at a loss for what to do. Moses knows that if he does intervene God in his anger will destroy the people; yet dare he defend the Israelites after they committed such a grievous sin? But as Moses is pondering this dilemma, God suddenly speaks to him: “Hanicha li! Let Me be! I will destroy this people, and begin again, making a new people out of you.”
Hanicha li – leave me be! As if to say to Moses, Go away, I cannot do this in your presence. At that moment Moses understands. God so loves Moses that he alone could stop God from carrying out the destruction of Israel. God was practically begging Moses to intercede. Moses realizes, in the words of the Midrash, that “hakol talui bi – everything depends upon me.” He rises to the responsibility, defending the people of Israel before God and convincing God to forgive them and rescind his decree.
...
Hakol talui bi – everything depends upon me – is also a good motto for us as we face the task of teshuvah on Yom Kippur. Teshuvah is all about taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences. And just as only Moses can intervene to save the people, so only we ourselves can do the teshuvah that saves us from the roa gezera, the harsh decree. Teshuvah is in out hands, not God’s. No one can change us, not God, not our parents or our spouse or any other human being, only we ourselves. Hakol talui bi – everything depends upon us.
Taking responsibility for our actions sounds simple, yet sometimes it is so hard for us to do. Let me give you an example. Friends of mine in a previous community have three sons. They are a shomer Shabbat family. One Shabbat the three sons decided to sneak into the basement to smoke cigarettes. The father wandered downstairs and caught them red-handed. The first son said, “Hey, don’t blame me. I am not responsible. I forgot it was Shabbat!” The second son said, “Don’t blame me! I am not responsible. I remembered it was Shabbat; but I forgot you are not allowed to smoke on Shabbat!” The third son lowered his head and mumbled, “Don’t blame me… I… I….” “Yes,” said his father impatiently, “What did you forget?” The boy piped up, “I forgot to lock the basement door!”
There are times when we are all like that third son. We know in our hearts that we are responsible, but we just cannot bring ourselves to accept that responsibility. Tonight, I want to talk tonight about the times we don’t accept responsibility, and about the impediments that stand in our way.
The first impediment is that sometimes rather than accept responsibility, we seek out someone else to blame for the things we have done. Often we end up blaming the very person that we have hurt. Take Mel Gibson. When he was caught having spewed anti-Semitic slurs at a Los Angeles policeman, he offered this apology: “If I have offended anyone in the Jewish community by my words, I regret it very much.”
In other words, Mel Gibson is not sorry for thinking or even saying what he did. He is sorry that it caused a ruckus because those Jews are so touchy, so easily offended. In essence even as he apologized he was saying it’s your fault not mine. You Jews are making all the noise. I’m sorry I fell into your trap.
It’s easy for us to see the fault in Mel Gibson. It’s much harder to see it in ourselves, to admit that we too play this same game every day. But hakol talui bi – teshuvah has to start with the self, with taking responsibility for our actions.
Second, sometimes the other person really did hurt us, but we still use it as an excuse to avoid responsibility for our own actions, as if our hurt justifies hurting them back. Yet we know deep down inside that hakol talui bi – we alone bear responsibility for what we do. When we are hurt, a better model for us to follow would be that of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Rabbi Carlebach once performed in Poland. He was asked how he could greet, shake hands with --and even hug --children of the perpetrators of the Holocaust and even perpetrators themselves. Carlebach answered, if we had two hearts like we have two arms and two legs, then one heart could be used for love and the other one for hate. Since I have but one heart, then I don't have the luxury of hating anyone.
A third way we push off responsibility is that we sometimes pretend that we do not have control over our actions and our words. Again, Mel Gibson is a not-so-shining example: After his first apology failed to quiet things down, he made this second attempt: “That wasn’t me talking---that was the booze talking.” In other words, because I was drunk I was not in control, so I cannot be held accountable.
But we are always accountable. Hakol talui bi. What is the first Al Chet that we say on Yom Kippur…Al chet shechatanu lifanecha b’ones -for the sin that we committed against You under duress, against my will. If it was under duress, why do we have to atone for it? If I did something because I had no choice, why should I be blamed for it?
The answer is that the first of all sins is to claim that I did it under duress, that I had no control over it. It wasn’t me. It was the bottle; it was the cop; it was a full moon; a bad hair day, or any one of a million other excuses. As long as you claim that it was not your fault, you can never do Teshuvah, you can never truly repent. And as long as you claim that it was not your fault, there is no way and there is no reason why you should be forgiven—either by God or by the one whom you have hurt.
Finally, we may feel sometimes like we simply cannot change, even though we know we should. Let me share a beautiful story with you: I read recently about a fourth grade teacher who was having her students do an unusual assignment. They were writing a list of things they thought they could not do. It was an "I Can't" list. I can't kick the soccer ball past second base. I can't do long division with more than three numbers. I can't get Sally to like me.
The teacher was writing her own list also: I can't get John's mother to come in for a teacher conference. I can't get my daughter to put gas in the car. I can't get Alan to use words instead of his fists.
When they had each filled up several sheets of paper, the teacher had them place their lists in a very large shoebox and she grabbed a shovel and led them outside to a corner of the schoolyard. One by one they all took turns with the shovel, digging a very large hole for the box. It was a grave for their "I Can't" lists. When the grave was ready, thirty-one, ten year olds stood there as they placed the shoe box at the bottom of the hole, covered it with dirt, and listened to these words from their teacher:
Friends, we are gathered here to day to honor the memory of “I Can't.” While he was here with us on earth, he touched the lives of everyone, some more than others. We have provided "I Can't" with a final resting place and a headstone that contains his epitaph. He is survived by his brothers and sisters "I Can,” "I Will,” and "I'm Going to Right Away." They are not as well known as their famous relative and are certainly not as strong and powerful yet. Perhaps, some day with your help, they will make an even bigger mark on the world. May “I Can’t” rest in peace and may everyone present pick up their lives and move forward in his absence. Amen.
The teacher cut a large tombstone out of cardboard and put the words “I Can’t” at the top and “Rest in Peace” at the bottom and wrote the date. She put the tombstone on the bulletin board for the rest of the year, and on some rare occasions when a student would feel defeated and say “I can’t,” she would point to the tombstone and the student would remember that “I Can’t” was dead and buried, and the student would resolve to try again.
How many times have we said, “I can’t?” “I can’t make it to minyan,” “I can’t give more tzedakah,” “I can’t reconcile with family and friends where there has been a falling out.”
God says to us, Bury the “I Can’ts”. You can. You really can change. Just open the gates of repentance to the width of an eye of a needle, and I will open them for you till elephants and camels can pass through. You needn’t come all the way, God says to us, just start the journey. I will meet you and bring you home. I will give you the strength to change. You just have to take the first step; and the first step is acknowledging responsibility – hakol talui bi – everything depends upon me.
On this Yom Kippur we will do a lot of praying. We will beat our chest and ask God’s forgiveness and plead with him to forego any punishment we may deserve and instead to grant us health, happiness, prosperity and blessing in the New Year. We come before God trembling, because we feel that our life is in God’s hands. But God says to us no, it is not so. I place your life in your own hands, hakol talui becha – everything depends upon you, upon your willingness to take responsibility for your life, your willingness to change, your willingness to forgive, your willingness to stand up when you are needed. It is all in your hands.
We would be wise on this Yom Kippur to heed the advice of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: Pray as if everything depended upon God and act as if everything depended upon you. Hakol talui banu – everything depends upon us. May we choose to so live that we bring blessing to ourselves and to all those around us in the coming year.
Proponents of Issue 3 are in the I Can't, or, in this case, We Can't, class of individuals.
They say, We Can't help it that there is no other and no better solution to the higher education affordability problem than to create another 109,000 addicts and give wealthy businesses more wealth while creating an ephemeral scholarship program that appears to have only the smallest of chances of actually helping those students who will most need help.
They say, We Can't help it if Ohioans want to go over the borders to gamble anyway; the only way to stop that is to create the same opportunity to gamble here in Ohio.
They say, We Can't help it if people's breaking point for when they'll stop gambling is low enough that the gambling industry is a lucrative one that happens to create crime and distress, on personal and community levels.
They say, We Can't help it if some people can't control themselves and their inability happens to make us a lot of money.
To those We Can'ts? I say bull.
If the proponents are smart enough to find the tens of millions being used to push for passage of Issue 3, to find people and entities to help do the dirty deceptive work of getting petitions signed, and to turn their heads away every time they see a billboard on the side of bus saying "It's for the Children" and chuckle because really "It's for the owners," they could - if they wanted to - come up with far better ways to make Ohio's students, families, corporations, government, nonprofits and academic institutions solve the affordability problems.
They just don't want to. Why don't they want to? That's for the proponents to answer. I would love to have them explain why they'd rather spend all this time and money and effort to use gambling as a higher education savior, than come up with something like real economic development and programs that rely on holding the institutions, the students and everyone else along the food chain of education responsible and accountable. Because all Ohioans rely on that food chain - for jobs, education and ideas to support our state's growth.
Comments are always open.
Previous reasons to vote no on Issue 3:
Reason 26
Reason 27
Reason 28
Reason 29
Reason 30
Reason 31
Reason 32
Reason 33
Reason 34
Reason 35
Reason 36
Reason 37
Reason 38
Reason 39
Reason 40
Reason 41
Reason 42
Reason 43
Reason 44
Reason 45
Reason 46
Reason 47
Reason 48
Reason 49
Reason 50
Reason 51
Reason 52
Reason 53
Reason 54
Reason 55
Reason 56
Reason 57
Vote no on Issue 3 (Ohio Learn and Earn).
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