Kavod, meaing "honor," comes from the same root as the word for "heavy." To hold something in honor is to give it weight, to view it as weighty, to take it seriously. It is to deem something worthwhile or valuable. Kavod can also be translated as "respect" or "dignity."

Parashat Reih offers us some of the clearest examples of this middah, both in its presence and in its absence. On the one hand, we are commanded to honor the poor of our own community; on the other hand, we read commandments about profound dishonor to the holy places of our ancestors' neighboring peoples.

Our society too often makes light of, or even ignores, the experiences of others. We ascribe genius ot the wealthy and blame poverty on the poor. Policymakers and pundits claim that government assistance for poor people is equivalent to unnecessary coddling, while they simultaneously approve tax relief and massive corporate subsidies for the wealthiest among us, thereby honoring the rich and privileged while dishonoring the poor and unprivileged. Such actions reveal that underneath al the rhetoric about helping "ordinary" people, the "haves" are honored, while the "have-nots" are not. A society that values kavod would be far fairer and more just; it would require us to honor the experiences of everyone.

When we read the latter chapters of our parashah with kavod in mind, we gain important wisdom about how we can be part of creating a better world. Alas, the opening of R'eih gives us something else entirely.

Whereas the end of the parashah gives us a kavod-filled ideal to which we may aspire, the parashah's opening offers the opposite. It is dominated by specific instructions to dishonor even the very memory of the conquered Canaanites, especially regarding their religious practices:

If we are looking for inspiration in Torah, and in this parashah in particular, for increasing kavod in the world, how do we deal with a text in which God commands our ancient ancestors to perform acts of dishonor? This is the sort of text that makes some people want to throw all of Torah out the window. And yet, just as we can cultivate kavod with respect to the other in our own time, we can also bring Ravod to bear on our relationship with the Torah's writers. They were imperfect human beings, with fears and prejudices that impacted what they wrote. They experienced the world in ways that are diff. cult for us to understand. Yet, as we have seen, making the effort to understand their perspective is part of the process of developing the capacity for honor. Making the effort to understand is not the same as defending ideas that we find repugnant. How, then, should we read the opening chapters of our parashah?

When I encounter Torah texts that I find offensive, like Reih's directive to destroy Canaanite religious sites, I ask myself if I can nevertheless learn from the writers' perspective. Here, I am struck by the harsh language regarding the religion of the other. Our translation of the beginning of Deuteronomy 12:2, "You must destroy [their religious sites]," doesn't capture the emphatic nature of the Hebrew, which repeats the verb "destroy" in two successive grammatical forms (abeid t'abdun). Everett Fox translates this as "You are to demolish, yes, demolish," which may better convey the stringency of the original. As if we hadn't gotten the point, verse 3 then uses four synonyms for "destroy" with respect to Canaanite altars, sacred posts, pillars, and god-images. Thus, in two verses, we have three forms of the word "destroy," plus four synonyms.

In other words, we dishonor others when we are unable to honor ourselves. The key to developing our capacity for kavod for everyone else is to remember, even in the face of all of our imperfections and misdeeds, that we too are made in the image of God. We, and others, are deserving of honor; this is a simple truth. Kavod is ours simply by virtue of being. We do not get it through achievement or lose it through failure. It simply is. Our job is to develop the habit of focusing on this simple truth and to avoid the siren song of judgmental thinking regarding others and ourselves.