You Can’t Outrun Honour
Many years ago, I spent a weekend with a friend in his mother’s small cottage in a quiet country town. It was another world entirely — stone floors worn smooth by generations, a single fireplace that warmed the whole house, chickens clucking in the yard, and a pair of goats roaming lazily in the back. There was no television, no modern entertainment, none of the distractions we take for granted. Just the simple rhythms of country life — conversation by the fire, the crackle of wood, the stillness of the fields.
On Sunday afternoons, his mother would go down to the local pub to catch up with the townsfolk. There was one man who always drew attention: he served as a guard for the Queen at Buckingham Palace. With that prestigious position came respect and pride, as though the whole town shared in the honor he carried.
But one year, something changed. In the very pub where people admired him most, he began to behave carelessly and crudely — mocking his role and saying he wanted to be “just like everyone else.”
The townsfolk would not accept it. To them, he wasn’t just another man. Guard or not, uniform or not, he carried the Queen’s dignity wherever he went. His words and actions reflected not only on him, but on her. And so they pushed back, rebuking him and even barring him from the pub.
It was a sharp reminder: when you try to cast off your honor, the world pushes back.
And this sense of inescapable honor reminds me of the words of Parashat Nitzavim:
“You will return to your heart among all the nations where the L-rd your G-d has scattered you… and the L-rd your G-d will gather you from the ends of the heavens and bring you back to the land of your fathers.” (Sefer Devarim 30:1–5)
Notice the certainty in those words: “you will return.” Not “if” — but “when.” Teshuvah is not merely an option — it is our destiny. However far we scatter, however much we try to disappear, eventually we come back — first to ourselves, then to G-d, and finally to our land.
A guard may walk away from his post, but he is still a guard. And a Jew may try to walk away from his calling, but he is still bound to the covenant of his people.
Welcome Back Home!
This is not only a teaching of the past — it is unfolding before our eyes. Across the globe, antisemitism rises, often in the very societies where Jews thought they had blended in at last. Nations gather to put Israel on trial, demanding that it surrender Judea and Samaria. Again and again, the message returns: we are not “just like everyone else.”
But what the world means as rejection, the Torah reframes as return. We cannot run from our role because it is unbreakable. And that is not a curse — it is a gift.
Teshuvah, then, is not about inventing something new. It is about embracing what was always there. To stop hiding, to stand openly as Jews, to return home where our story began and where it will always belong.
This Rosh Hashanah, may the cry of the shofar remind us: honor chases each of us. We cannot outrun it. We can only return — to ourselves, to our people, to G-d, and to Israel.
Happy New Year. May we all be inscribed in the good Book of Life,
and well over the fast.
שנה טובה, תכתב ותחתם בספר החיים לטובה, וצום קל
And very soon, may we meet each other in our homeland.
שבת שלום
שמואל
