Don't say "mummy's in the toilet"!

Back in the day, mobile telephony had yet to be invented. Each home that could afford it had its own phone. When the phone rang, you answered it. If it wasn't for you, you asked who the caller wanted to speak to.

As a small child, when I was taught how answer the phone, my father cautioned me: “You must never say ‘mummy’s in the toilet’; just say she’s busy”. I agreed to do as I was told but I didn’t see why I should. Everyone goes to the toilet after all, I thought, even the Queen (my grandma said so!), and when I was very young I was even praised for doing so myself. Anyway at this time I was too young to appreciate that I was being told not give an accurate and unvarnished account of the situation.

Truth is a precious and highly-valued commodity in Jewish life. Midvar sheker tirchak,says the Torah, “distance yourself from falsehood” (Shemot 23:7). Pirkei Avot underlines the point. Truth is one of the three things on which life on Earth depends (1:18); conceding the truth is one of the seven practices associated with a person who is wise, not one who is uncultivated (5:9); it is also one of the 48 bases on which Torah learning is acquired (6:6). So truth is vital—but do we not depend on falsehood too?

I recalled my father’s instruction about answering the phone when I found R' Chaim Friedlander discussing a similar topic in Siftei Chaim: Middot veAvodat Hashem. There he relates the classic aggadic story of a rabbi who relocates to a town called Kushta (Aramaic for ‘truth’), where everyone tells the truth and no-one dies before their time (Sanhedrin 97a). One day a visitor calls to see his wife, who was washing her hair. Believing that it would be immodest to mention this to the caller, he says to the caller that his wife is not there. In consequence, his two sons die.

From this tale it appears that it is imperative to tell the truth at all costs. But is this right and proper? In the first place, the rabbi’s answer was immaterial so far as the caller was concerned: the wife was unavailable, and therefore not there to receive the caller, whether she was washing her hair, saying her morning prayers or sleeping off a hangover from the previous night. Moreover, we know that it is sometimes a mitzvah not to tell the truth, for example to save life or to make peace.

How can this be explained? In cosmic terms, every item of sheker that enters the world has an impact on it. In the case of any individual lie, the impact may be small. However, the impact of many lies will be cumulative. The fact that there are countervailing priorities such as the need to save life, make peace or—as in this instance—preserve modesty does not prevent sheker from having its effect. Essentially, truth and falsehood are absolutes: something either is true, or it isn’t.

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. Before Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good or evil, his worldview was therefore based on the binary distinction between true and false. Once he had ingested and internalised good and evil, he was now faced with qualities that were not absolute but relative: there are shades of good and evil and one is sometimes forced to choose between courses of action that have both good and bad consequences.

The teachings of Pirkei Avot do not focus on theoretical issues of this nature. In our daily lives we accept the importance of truth—but with two qualifications. First we have to recognise that truth, justice and peace are equal partners in our lives (Avot 1:18). Secondly, even where we are obliged by halachah not to tell the truth, we should still concede that the truth remains the truth even if we may not actually articulate it through our own speech (Avot 5:9).