Subject: In Memory of Baruch Yitzchak ben Yirmiyahu (Barry Pessin)
From: Heath Berkin <heath.berkin@gmail.com>
Date: 1/8/2016, 3:48 AM
To: Heath Berkin <heath.berkin@gmail.com>
BCC: menachem@alonsystems.com
Rabbbi Eliezer says: Your friend's honor should be as dear to you as your own honor.
Most commentators understand this to mean that you should be careful about your friends honor and make sure not to disrespect him. Furthermore if you hear him being degraded you should defend him as you would defend your own honor.
There is an alternative understanding to this as well. According to the first interpretation, the Mishna seems to be somewhat condoning the pursuit of honor when we know in fact a person should run away from honor. These commentators (including Zehcos Avos and Magen Avos) take a novel approach to explain the Mishna.
"Your friend's honor" means the honor that your friend or anyone else accords you. Since a person should run away from honor as it can very likely make him haughty he needs to take steps to blunt the impact of the honor given to him. How does one go about doing that? If he considers the honor that his friend gave him "as dear to him as his own honor", meaning he should look at it as if he gave himself this honor. Obviously if a person honors himself this honor is laughable and won't make him haughty the mishna is advising us that you should relate to the honor someone else gives you as if you gave yourself the honor.
There are a number of stories of great Rabbis who took this approach in one way or another. The story is told of one of the great rabbis of last generation who was invited to officiate at a wedding. It is the tradition for someone at the wedding to announce and invite the great rabbi to come up and officiate the wedding. The announcer always calls upon the rabbi with numerous titles of greatness and prestige. This particular rabbi was fearful that upon hearing all of these great praises about himself would cause him to become big-headed. To preempt this from happening, the rabbi took the microphone and announced himself with all of the titles of prestige! Everyone hearing chuckled, as what kind of prestige and honor is it if the rabbi says these things about himself.