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During the course of the past year, as in every year, two questions continue to arise that motivate and inform my actions.  The questions come from Hillel’s statement in Pirkei Avot, “Im ein a-ni li, mi li, v’im ani l’atzmai, mah ani - If I am only for myself, who will be for me, and if I am only for others, what am I?” These questions are at the crux of the human conundrum that we all confront. “What do I owe myself?” -- “What is my responsibility to others?”. I have devoted many sermons to the principles of joy, gratitude and happiness that help guide me in what I owe myself.  The latter question, “What is my responsibility to others?”, is driven by something else and is the focus of what I want to share with you today.  The principle that helps me figure out what I owe others is honor.

 Honor.  It’s a word that almost doesn’t seem to fit anymore in our modern world.  The whole idea of honor feels old, timeworn, quaint, something that belongs to a bygone era, not modern times.  Perhaps, with modernity, honor was cast aside.  Perhaps honor was just a tragic casualty of progress.  Honor may be an old-fashioned notion, but I think it is something we need to recapture and resurrect.  I think it is something which we long for and have missed.  I think honor might be the key to unlocking some of the tragic behaviors that have pervaded our society recently.  And I do not think I am alone in thinking honor is missing and missed.

 This past week, after the death of Justice Ginsburg, I embarked on a quest.  I wanted to understand what honor means, how it is understood by different people in different contexts.  I came to discover that many people employ the term, “honor,” but very few actually offer a definition of the concept or indicate precisely what it means. 

 Our tradition tells us in several places to act with honor. The most famous use of the term of found in the Ten Commandments, where it states, “Ka-beid et a’vikha v’et I’mekha - Honor your father and mother.”  Today I would like to point you towards what honor is.

 First, honor is something you do.  It is not an abstract idea. It is an act.  Honor has a certain look and feel that distinguish it from other behaviors. Two stories which describe one character who acts without honor, and another which speaks of a character who acts with honor will illustrate my point.

 A young man studying in a yeshiva went barefoot to the doorstep of a philanthropist. He knocked on the door and asked the man for money to buy a pair of shoes. The philanthropist slammed the door in his face. Humiliated, the student went back to the beit midrash, the house of study. Over time, his hard work paid off, and he became a scholar of great repute. The very same philanthropist approached him many years later and asked if he could be his patron and publish his first book. The student- turned-scholar remembered this man’s face and said in sadness, “No thanks. There was a time when you could have had me for a pair of shoes.”

The Talmud (Eiruvin 54b) tells the story of Rabbi Prayda, who had a very slow-to-learn student -- so much so that Rabbi Prayda would have to review each lesson four hundred times before the boy understood it. One day, when the student was having extra difficulty concentrating, he taught him the same lesson eight hundred times!

 The Philanthropist, because of his inconsistent sense of honor, created a world of pettiness, disgust, and mistrust.  Rabbi Prayda, because of his code of honor, created a world of love, patience and support. Honor, or lack thereof, creates the very order of our universe.  Our tradition teaches, “Hakol tza-fui, v’ha-reshut ne-tu-nah -- All is foreseen, but free will is granted.”  God sees the fork in the road before each decision.  One path is the path of honor, the other of dishonor.  God hopes we choose the path of honor because that is the way to spiritual wholeness.  However, God leaves it up to us to choose. 

Honor is important because it creates order.  Even pirates and thieves have a code of honor.  Even criminals want a world of order even as they create chaos for others.  On second day Rosh Hashanah, we read about the creation of the world. The text says that God created order from chaos, tohu v’vohu.  God creates order from chaos by speaking.  As humans we create order from chaos by acting.  God takes God’s thoughts and turns them into words.  We take our thoughts and turn them into action.  This act of turning thought into action is the process that creates order.  These actions in turn create patterns of behavior that help us to navigate the world and make the unpredictable predictable. When our tradition says, “honor your mother and father,” it is not only saying act in this way. It is saying, have a code in your mind that turns thoughts into action, so the chaos of the child parent relationship takes on a semblance of order, decency, and respect. 

 This day of Yom Kippur brings this lesson home.  It is a lesson in how we should act in the world.  It is a lesson in menschlichkiet, the act of behaving with humanity.  According to an article in Psychology today, ”A mensch has personality traits which most of us consider admirable. These traits usually refer to a person who is kind, respectful and trustworthy… honest, compassionate, tolerant, generous, responsible and humble. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-emotional-footprint/201708/who-is-and-who-is-not-mensch).

 Perhaps being a mensch is a synonym for honor.  Perhaps the reason it took me so long to figure out what honor is, is that I was looking in the wrong place.  Honor, kavod, is simply the act of being a mensch – of doing the right thing.

 Abraham Lincoln said this about trying to live a life of honor, “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”  We do the best we can to be the menschen that we know we are on the inside.

Right now, I think we have a crises of honor in this country.  Hillel said, “If I am only for myself who will be for me, and if I am only for myself, what am I.”  As Americans we have mastered being for ourselves, and that is important.  Now we are faced with creating spiritual balance in this country by asking, “Now that I have taken care of me, what is my responsibility to the other?”  Our obligation to others is a hard question to answer.  However, if we can agree on a shared definition of how to act with honor, the question becomes easier to answer.  If pirates can have a code, then Americans surely can have one as well.

 Having an agreed upon code of honor, as sense of shared communal decency, will not solve all the problems we face, but I think it is where we need to start.  I think the failure of so many to act with honor is what has left our peoples’ souls in chaos.

 Having honor allows a person to deal with difficult situations that may not have a clear decision.  Having a code of honor allows a person to solve problems as they arise.   Without honor as a driving heuristic, a strategy to solve problems, we are left with people who behave inconsistently and leave themselves and others feeling all too often unbalanced and disempowered.  In short, we are left in a state of chaos.  We become like a puppy who never knows whether it is doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

 Today on Yom Kippur we engage not only in cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul, of the innermost workings of our hearts. We also engage in i-nu-i nefesh, the affliction of our souls. We look honestly at how we have acted since the last day of atonement.  We search the deepest recesses of our beings and ask if we have been acted consistently with honor during this past year and we determine to be more honorable in the year to come.

 Honor is fundamental to the life well lived. To always act with honor, to always be menschen, is near impossible.  This does not make us failures; it makes us human.  This is why we have Yom Kippur -- not to beat ourselves up over mistakes made in the past year, but to find a beacon to aspire to in the coming year.  This year that beacon should be honor.  We need to aspire to being menschen, people of honor -- people who hold ourselves to being kind, respectful and trustworthy… honest, compassionate, tolerant, generous, responsible and humble.

 We will not be perfect in acting out the pillars of honor.  That said, by aspiring to them, we will make the world outside and our internal spiritual world stronger. If we can all commit to what some may regard as the “old-fashioned” idea of acting with honor, our world will become less chaotic.  By trying our best to live a life of honor, next Yom Kippur we can be proud of who we tried to be while reflecting on the areas that need improvement.  Perhaps that is the answer to the question of what I owe to others?  I owe it to them to be a person of honor, a person who is always trying in everything they do to be their best self and to treat others with the respect, kindness, and compassion they deserve.  Let honor guide us in this year 5781.  Shanah Tovah u’gmar tov!