Let us say that one day a number of convicted sex offenders and murderers got together and decided to give large sums of money to a yeshiva. The yeshiva accepted the money and subsequently had a dinner honoring these unrepentant, evil people. At the dinner, the praises of the honorees were sung. This would provoke moral outrage. The anti-Semitic Jewish blogs would have a field day. "HA! All you religious people care about is money. You will sell your souls for a dollar."
This moral outrage would be justified. How can one honor and praise such evil people just because they gave money??!
So I ask - Why do yeshivos whose job it is to impart Jewish values to the next generation honor people whose lifestyles are totally in contradiction to the values they are trying to teach their students? When a Jew is intermarried, eats pork, violates Shabbos etc. etc. this should ALSO produce moral indignation and outrage. היתכן??! How can it be? I am honoring a man whose wife went to mikva before their wedding and hasn't been since? Each time he is with her it is an איסור כרת. He does thousands of melachos EVERY Shabbos. EACH ONE INDEPENDENTLY would mandate capital punishment [under the right circumstances]. What message are we sending to our children? You can do WHATEVER YOU WANT as long as you make a lot of money and give a fraction of it to tzdaka. That is a dangerous message, but trust me - the kids absorb it.
People occasionally honor rabbis who hurt people badly in various ways. How do the victims of these rabbis feel? Do the rabbi's mitzvos erase the harm he caused?? And we send the message - you don't have to be a good person as long as you can raise a lot of money and build institutions or you know a lot of Torah.
It is also FORBIDDEN to honor sinful people as Rabbeinu Yonah talks about at length [see below where I copied just one passage of numerous ones].
So I am registering my protest: Sinners [known in the vernacular as reshaim] don't deserve respect. If they don't know any better they should be loved and taught. If they know better then they should be admonished. But in either case they deserve no respect.
You want to respect someone - there are PLENTY of great people out there who deserve it.
