Honor

On Shabbat morning I had the privilege of addressing 57 Beth El 3rd graders as they celebrated Aleph Consecration and Kellman Academy convocation. I decided to speak to them about honor. I said that I hoped that all of them would carry the new siddurim (prayerbooks) they were receiving with honor. In front of their families and friends I asked the kids if they knew what honor was. One boy raised his hand and said, “It’s when you feel proud of yourself.” Another said, “It is something special that is given to you when you have earned it.” Right On!

I asked them to define honor because it seems, aside from the military, it’s not a term you hear much about. Somehow honor has become hard to define. But it’s not that difficult… Being honorable means living with a sense of respect for what you believe is right. It is living by the virtues and values that guide your life, even when they bring you into opposition with others around you. When you are being honorable you never need to be ashamed of the choices you make. As an old Jewish axiom has it, “Where there is no honor, neither is there disgrace.”

In Yiddish there is an expression, one that we don’t hear quite enough, “Is Pahst Nisht” – which I will translate as, “It is beneath your honor.” In the age of reality TV, (whose theme seems to be “How low will you go?”), our tradition reminds us that without defining what constitutes our honor we will always be less than the person Gd knows we can be.