Here lies the truth

There’s a Jewish catechism that runs along the following lines:

Do I have to tell the truth?

Yes.

Why do I have to tell the truth?

Because there is a Torah commandment to avoid falsehood (Shemot 23:7: “midvar sheker tirchak”).

Are we taught a reason for this?

Yes.

What is that reason?

According to the oral Torah (Avot 1:18, per Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel), truth is one of the three things that keeps the world running smoothly.

What are the other things that keep the world running smoothly?

Peace and justice.

Are truth, peace and justice equally important?

No. Peace is most important because both truth and justice must be sacrificed if peace is to prevail.

So I don’t have to tell the truth when it is conflict with peace or justice?

Yes—or is it no?

A good summary of the position can be found in Seymour Rossel’s book on Avot for children, When a Jew Seeks Wisdom: the Sayings of the Fathers:

“Sometimes, the Rabbis said, even when we think that we are right in an argument, we should give in. As long as the argument is not an important one, peace is more important than being right. And very often hatred grows because we are too stubborn. It is better for us to bend a little than to cause disunity and separation”.

This is reflected in various ways: the untruths uttered by Aharon in aggadic literature which led to the making of peace between enemies (see commentaries on Avot 1:12); permitting the telling of a lie in order to save a life, and complimenting a bride on her wedding day.

Truth also gives way to justice. How so? The procedural rules governing the hearing of a din Torah prevent a witness from giving evidence, however true it may be, in the event that he is ineligible to testify or his evidence is not corroborated by another witness.

So truth is capped by the need to make peace and by the need to demonstrate that justice is both done and seen to be done. But not everyone agrees that truth should be suppressed. There is a respectable school of opinion that maintains that every lie increases the damaging values of falsehood in the world. This position has far-reaching consequences: it means, for example, that a true narrative should not be embellished by the addition of extra material in order to enhance its educational or aesthetic value.

According to R’ David Segal (the Taz), in his commentary on the Torah (quoted in MiMa’ayonot Netzach on Avot), falsehoods should not emanate from a person’s mouth even for the sake of peace. He cites the episode in the Torah in which Yaakov leads his father Yitzchak to believe that he, Yaakov, is in fact Eisav by speaking (at Bereshit 27:19) words that were ambiguous, knowing which way Yitzchak would understand them: אָנֹכִי עֵשָׂו בְּכֹרֶךָ (ani Eisav bechorecha, which can be taken as either “I am Eisav your firstborn” or “It’s me. Eisav is your firstborn”). So, says, the Taz, if you can’t tell the whole truth, speak words that can be construed as the truth.

This is a lofty and principled ideal, though it may require great presence of mind to live up to it. When an enraged axeman comes running after your friend, points ahead and asks: “did he go that way?” one’s natural instinct is to say “yes” if he didn’t or “no” if he did—and it’s not easy to buy time in which to think up an ambiguous answer that will satisfy the demands of truth while achieving the results of a falsehood. The masters—or should it be mistresses—of this art were the priestesses who ran the Delphic Oracle in Pythia and whose ambiguous responses to vital questions form a significant and highly entertaining role in Ancient Greek history and mythology.

In secular society we find an endorsement of the Taz in the notion of being “economical with the truth”, i.e. just telling as much of the truth without giving the whole picture. My favourite example, which may well be apocryphal, is the story told of King Edward VII who, when still only Prince of Wales, was presented with a crate of Welsh whisky by his loyal and admiring subjects. On sampling the beverage, His Royal Highness was unimpressed and determined not to let another drop pass his lips. However, he thanked the gift-givers and assured them of his gratitude, adding: “I shall always keep a crate of Welsh whisky in my cellar”.

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Misleading words: what we ask for

This short post follows several earlier discussions (see list below) that touched on our problem with truth. In short, the Torah (Shemot 23:7) and Avot (1:18, 5:9, 6:6) tell us that we are supposed to commit ourselves to tell the truth and to acknowledge it when we see or hear it. But there are times when we may not, or must not, do so—for example to make peace, preserve modesty or save life. Every word of untruth is deemed sheker, a falsehood, which damages our spiritual environment and corrodes our souls, even if we are obliged to speak it and are rewarded for doing so.

In this context it struck me that, every time we finish our Amidah prayer, we say the following line:

אֱלֹהַ֞י נְצֹ֣ר ׀ לְשׁוֹנִ֣י מֵרָ֗ע וּשְׂפָתַי֩ מִדַּבֵּ֨ר מִרְמָ֜ה

[Translation] “My God, guard my tongue from ra (‘evil’) and my lips from speaking mirmah (‘deception’)”.

We ask God to make sure that we say nothing bad and nothing deceptive—but we don’t ask him to protect us from saying anything untrue. This seems to me to be a strong support for the argument that, however important absolute truth may be, both in our daily lives and in terms of our spiritual welfare, real-world pragmatism demands that, while we must always respect it, we must regretfully sacrifice it for the sake of a greater good.

There is biblical support for this proposition at Bereshit 27:18-19. When Yitzchak wants to be sure that the son standing before him is Yaakov or Eisav, he asks מִי אַתָּה בְּנִי (mi atah beni?, “Who are you, my son?”). Yaakov has a problem. He could say “Eisav”, which is a downright lie, or he could say “Yaakov”, which is totally true but would result in him losing the blessing his mother so desperately wants him to receive. So he answers אָנֹכִי עֵשָׂו בְּכֹרֶךָ (anochi Eisav bechorecha). This answer is equivocal. The Torah text contains no punctuation and can be read and therefore translated in two ways. If the answer is taken as a single phrase it means “I am Eisav your firstborn”. This would be sheker. Alternatively, splitting the anochi from Eisav bechorecha, it means “It’s me! Eisav is your firstborn” which is true but misleading, mirmah, and not a total lie. The ambiguity of Yaakov’s words thus serves two functions: it enables Yaakov both to mislead his father in order to achieve a greater good and to remind himself that what he said is not the best way of expressing truth, so that he should not get into the habit of telling lies.

So we still have a problem. If we accept that sheker is so dangerous and that mirmah is less so, why do we ask in our Amidah to be protected from mirmah and not sheker?

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Recent Avot Today posts on truth and lies

‘When love is not enough, try fear instead’ (on saying that Sarah was Abraham’s sister, not his wife) here

‘Don’t say “Mummy’s in the toilet”’ (on sparing people embarrassment) here

‘When two giants meet: a modern midrash?’ (is it permissible to fabricate a tale involving real people in order to teach an important point?) here

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Older posts (on the Avot Today weblog)

‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ (about repenting for half-truths on Yom Kippur) here

‘Learning from the lives of Torah sages’ (on potentially apocryphal tales of the great and good) here

‘Truth, justice and peace: which is the “odd man out”?’ (on sacrificing truth for peace and justice) here

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The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Anyone spending all or most of the day in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, will have noticed how often the word emet (“truth”) and its derivatives crop up in the extensive liturgy that addresses the issues of confession, repentance and the quest for forgiveness. In short we are to acknowledge the truth of who we are and what we have done, to strip away the sheker(“falsity”) that can so easily insinuate its way into playing a major part in our lives, and to stand before God as our true selves with the sincere aspiration that we will seek to do better, to be better, in the year ahead.

Emet plays a key role in Pirkei Avot. It is one of the three qualities upon which the continuation of civilised life depends (1:18). Acknowledgement of the truth, however inconvenient it may be, is one of the seven signs of a wise person (5:9); setting oneself on the path of truth is listed as one of the 48 steps to acquiring Torah (6:6).

While the Yom Kippur liturgy contrasts emet and sheker, Pirkei Avot makes no mention of sheker at all. This is unsurprising if we remember that Avot is not a philosophical tract on the nature of abstract concepts but a set of practical guidelines for moral Jewish decision-making. Thus, while truth and peace are both shortlisted as values upon which the world’s survival depends, a mishnah in the first perek (1:12) advocates following the path of Aaron in loving peace and pursuing peace. Aaron famously accomplishes this path midrashically by falsely telling each of two adversaries that the other was sad to be in dispute and wanted to make peace.

If truth is accepted as a relative value rather than an absolute, we can accommodate the concept of the partial or incomplete truth, when words that are spoken are literally true but do not tell the whole story. But how far can not-quite-truth be acceptable? There is a countertrend towards promoting the absolute value of truth. This can be seen in the Sefer Chasidim, where Rabbi Yehudah HaChasid disapproves of the practice of improving even a true story by embellishing it—even if the story has didactic value which is enhanced by the embellishment. It can also be seen in the Chafetz Chaim’s important work on lashon hara (improperly telling tales of others, whether true or false). This work covers much of the same ground as Rabbeinu Yonah’s Sha’are Teshuvah, but effectively converting what were previously regarded as middot(discretionary canons of behaviour) into mitzvot (binding commandments).

A related area of truth and falsehood is that of midrashic teachings, many of which are fanciful and, in real-world terms, impossible. Are they emet because the message they convey is true, or sheker because they did not happen, could not happen or clash factually with other midrashim on the same subject? Here the range of opinions is wide, spanning those who accept as a matter of faith that all midrashim are true and those who discount their veracity—however plausible they may be—on the ground that they are midrashim. Many people adopt the position that many midrashim are literally false but metaphorically true, and that the metaphorical truth trumps the literal falsehood. However, this convenient solution is not, so far as I am aware, flagged by their authors except where the tales are described as mashalim (“parables”), such as Rabbi Akiva’s famous citation of a dialogue between a cunning fox and some remarkably self-aware fish (Berachot 61b).

This leaves us on Yom Kippur with a difficult decision: do we repent telling an untruth or half-truth because we have lied and thus introduced more sheker into the world? Or do we decide not to repent, even if by doing so we are effectively judging our own actions and pre-empting the decision of the heavenly court? Readers of this post now have a year to decide before Yom Kippur comes around again.