When, if ever, have you honored someone else? Who? For what?
When, if ever, have you been honored? By whom? For what?
Honor, n.
hon·or | \ ˈä-nər \
Definition of honor
(Entry 1 of 2)
1a: good name or public esteem : REPUTATION
b: a showing of usually merited respect : RECOGNITIONpay honor to our founder
2: PRIVILEGEhad the honor of joining the captain for dinner
3: a person of superior standing —now used especially as a title for a holder of high officeif Your Honor please
4: one whose worth brings respect or fame : CREDITan honor to the profession
5: the center point of the upper half of an armorial escutcheon
6: an evidence or symbol of distinction: such as
a: an exalted title or rank
b(1): BADGE, DECORATION
(2): a ceremonial rite or observanceburied with full military honors
c: an award in a contest or field of competition
darchaic : a gesture of deference : BOW
ehonors plural
(1): an academic distinction conferred on a superior student
(2): a course of study for superior students supplementing or replacing a regular course
7: CHASTITY, PURITYfought fiercely for her honor and her life— Barton Black
8a: a keen sense of ethical conduct : INTEGRITYa man of honor
b: one's word given as a guarantee of performanceon my honor, I will be there
9honors plural : social courtesies or civilities extended by a hostasked her to do the honors
10a(1): an ace, king, queen, jack, or ten especially of the trump suit in bridge
(2): the scoring value of honors held in bridge —usually used in plural
b: the privilege of playing first from the tee in golf
Rabbi Yose said: whoever honors the Torah is themselves honored by others, and whoever dishonors the Torah is themselves dishonored by others.
When Rabbi Yose says that one who honors the Torah is honored by others, is he speaking descriptively or prescriptively? That is: Is he saying that one who honors the Torah is, inevitably, honored by others? Or is he saying that one who honors the Torah is deserving of honor by others? What, if anything, is the difference between these two readings?
Honor of the Torah is [manifested] in teaching alacrity in its performance and honoring the sages that support it and the books that they wrote abut it. And so [too], desecration of the Torah is the opposite of [these] three.
Abaye said: As it was taught in a baraita that it is stated: “And you shall love the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 6:5), which means that you shall make the name of Heaven beloved. How should one do so? One should do so in that one should read Torah, and learn Mishna, and serve Torah scholars, and should be pleasant with people in business transactions. What do people say about such a person? Fortunate is their parent who taught them Torah, fortunate is their teacher who taught them Torah, woe to the people who have not studied Torah. So-and-so, who taught them Torah, see how pleasant are the teacher's ways, how proper are their deeds. The verse states about them and others like them: “You are My servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3).
רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר: לֹא מְקוֹמוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם מְכַבְּדוֹ, אֶלָּא אָדָם מְכַבֵּד אֶת מְקוֹמוֹ. שֶׁכֵּן מָצִינוּ בְּהַר סִינַי, שֶׁכׇּל זְמַן שֶׁהַשְּׁכִינָה שְׁרוּיָה עָלָיו, אָמְרָה תּוֹרָה: ״גַּם הַצֹּאן וְהַבָּקָר אַל יִרְעוּ אֶל מוּל הָהָר הַהוּא״, נִסְתַּלְּקָה שְׁכִינָה מִמֶּנּוּ, אָמְרָה תּוֹרָה: ״בִּמְשֹׁךְ הַיֹּבֵל הֵמָּה יַעֲלוּ בָהָר״.
Rabbi Yosei says: It is not the place of a person that honors him; rather, the person honors his place, as we found with regard to Mount Sinai, that as long as the Divine Presence rested upon it, the Torah said: “Neither let the flocks nor the herds feed before that mount” (Exodus 34:3). Once the Divine Presence departed from the mountain, the Torah said: “When the shofar sounds long they shall come up to the mount” (Exodus 19:13). This indicates that the sanctity was not inherent to the place but was due to the Divine Presence resting there...
How, if at all, do these respective Talmudic passages illuminate the meaning of our Mishnah?
Several senses of the noun public tend to be intermixed in usage. People do not always distinguish between the public and a public, although in some contexts this difference can matter a great deal.
The public is a kind of social totality. Its most common sense is that of the people in general. It might be the people organized as the nation, the commonwealth, the city, the state, or some other community. It might be very general, as in Christendom or humanity. But in each case the public, as a people, is thought to include everyone within the field in question. This sense of totality is brought out in speaking of the public, even though to speak of a national public implies that others exist; there must be as many publics as polities, but whenever one is addressed as the public, the others are assumed not to matter.
A public can also be a second thing: a concrete audience, a crowd witnessing itself in visible space, as with a theatrical public. Such a public also has a sense of totality, bounded by the event or by the shared physical space. A performer on stage knows where her public is, how big it is, where its boundaries are, and what the time of its common existence is. A crowd at a sports event, a concert, or a riot might be a bit blurrier around the edges, but still knows itself by knowing where and when it is assembled in common visibility and common action.
I will return to both of these senses, but what I mainly want to clarify in this essay is a third sense of public: the kind of public that comes into being only in relation to texts and their circulation—like the public of this essay. (Nice to have you with us, still.) The distinctions among these three senses are not always sharp and are not simply the difference between oral and written contexts. When an essay is read aloud as a lecture at a university, for example, the concrete audience of hearers understands itself as standing in for a more indefinite audience of readers. And often, when a form of discourse is not addressing an institutional or subcultural audience, such as members of a profession, its audience can understand itself not just as a public but as the public. In such cases, different senses of audience and circulation are in play at once.
ר"י אומר כל המכבד את התורה גופו מכובד על הבריות וכל המחלל כו':
ירצה בזה כי כבוד התורה היא שיחשוב האדם כי לא דבר ריק הוא שבכל תיבה ואות ותגין דאורייתא יש רזין וגנזין דאוריי' וכל התורה המצויה בכתב אתנו אינה רק גופין וכמו שיש לאדם גוף נפש רוח נשמה ונשמה לנשמה עד א"ס ב"ה עד שלא ישיגהו שום נברא בעולם כן יש לתורה כי האותיות הם גופין וכמאמר התנא קינין ופתחי נדה הן הן גופי הלכות והתגין ונקודות וטעמים הם נפש רוח נשמה עוד יש לה נשמה לנשמה עד א"ס והן סודות נוראות גנוזים וטמונים ששום בריה בעולם אינה יכולה להשיגם ונמצא כשהאדם לומד התורה בזה הענין בכוונתו אל הפנימיות הנ"ל עד א"ס ומאמין בזה באמונה שלימה כי כל דיבור תורה שלמד הוא מלא רזין וגנזין דאורייתא ומקשר התורה זו שלומד בתורה שלמעלה באורות עליונים בנר"ן הנ"ל וזהו כבודה של תורה.
הוא ג"כ מכובד על הבריות ר"ל שגופו ג"כ יהיה מקושר בנשמתו למעלה עד א"ס ב"ה ויאיר בגופו הארת נשמתו.
והמחלל את התורה שעושה התורה חלול מכל דבר בענין סיפורי מעשיות שיש בתורה שהם מלאים רזין וגנזין והוא עושה התורה חלולה מכל וכל בחושבו שאין בה דבר פנימי כ"א כמגלת ספר כתוב אליו אזי התורה היא אצלו כגוף בלי נשמה ואינו ממשיך החיות הפנימי שהם הסודות הנשמות הנ"ל לתוכה אזי גופו ג"כ מחולל על הבריות ר"ל נעשה חלל שאינו מקושר בנשמתו ונעשה חלל מהם...
The intention here is to say that honoring the Torah is when one realizes that Torah is not an empty vessel--but rather that in every word and letter and jot there are mysteries and secrets. The entire written Torah in our possession is but the body. That is, just as a person has four parts (guf, nefesh, ruach, neshamah), and even a neshamah to the neshamah until ein sof, such that no created being in the universe can comprehend it, so too for the Torah... The crowns and vowels and trop markings are these levels, reaching up to ein sof. They are great mysteries which are hidden and concealed, which no creature can comprehend. When one studies Torah with this awareness and with intention toward this inner experience, and with the complete faith that every word of Torah she has studied is full of mysteries and secrets, and thus connects the Torah she is studying with the Torah that exists in the supernal realms--this is the honor of the Torah.
This one will likewise be honored among people. That is, their body will be connected by means of their soul upwards to Ein Sof, and the light of their soul will illuminate their body.
And one who desecrates (מחלל) the Torah: That is who makes the Torah hollow (חלול), drained of vitality, and simply a book of stories, not filled mysteries and depths... In this one's thought, there is no inner life to the Torah... To this one, the Torah is like a body without a soul, and thus this one does not draw forth the inner vitality--the soulful depths we have discussed above--into it. And thus this one's own physical body is likewise hollow; that is, they are made hollow as they have detached their soul.
Donna Hicks, Leading with Dignity: How to Create a Culture That Brings Out the Best in People (Yale University Press 2018)
The wounds we inflict on one another during a breakdown of a relationship are not only painful, but also often humiliating. Whoever said, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me” got it wrong. Words can be used as weapons to psychologically annihilate people’s dignity—their sense of value and worth. It’s like aiming for the heart when you want to physically destroy someone. Words that take aim at dignity can inflict pain that is devastating. But unlike a physical injury, there are no broken bones, no blood, no obvious sign of a wound. The pain that results from interactions that violate dignity remain invisible, causing people to suffer silently…
The emotional volatility of having our dignity honored or violated cannot be overstated. When people feel that their value and worth are recognized in their relationships, they experience a sense of well-being that enables them to grow and flourish. If, by contrast, their dignity is routinely injured, relationships are experienced as a source of pain and suffering.