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Jewish World Review March 15, 2000 / 8 Adar II, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
SHOULD JEWS always tell the truth? At first glance, the Torah's instruction, " keep far from falsehood" (Exodus 23:7), seems to be straightforward enough. Our sages called truth "G-d's seal" and three times each day the committed Jew prays "guard my tongue from
evil and my lips from spreading deceit". Yet if we probe further we find that the classical Jewish sources assign truth to different categories, ranging from those where truth is critical to others where telling the truth would actually be wrong.
At one end of the scale are oaths --- promises or statements made with reference to a sacred object or to G-d's name. Here, the true value of each word is absolute and the slightest deviation is a sin . So severe are oaths that our sages advised people to
avoid making them. Even today, many Jews prefer to affirm in a court of law rather than swear to tell the whole truth. This this does not mean that their evidence is suspect. Rather it is an affirmation of the importance of truth, and a recognition of our own human frailty --- we are subject to faulty memory and misunderstanding.
At the other end of the spectrum are situations where truthfulness would be positively wrong.
Similar things have happened countless times throughout history. During the Holocaust, people hiding Jews regularly lied about their whereabouts. It goes without saying that such lies were the correct course of action.
Lying is sometimes even acceptable on compassionate grounds. A sick Armenian king once sent a messenger to the prophet Elisha to ask whether he would recover. Elisha foresaw that he was soon to die and said to the messenger, "tell him that he will
certainly live," (II Kings 8:7-15). To have told the truth would have been pointlessly cruel to a helpless, dying man.
There are other circumstances in which, while not actually being untruthful, Jewish teachings encourage withholding the full facts. A person asked about his or her accomplishments is expected to respond with humility and not roll off lists of amazing
feats. Similarly, our rabbis advised people not to recount all a person's praises in their presence. Neither praising oneself nor being praised by others is particularly good for the ego. The proud, self-satisfied person, whom the Talmud describes as so full
of his own presence that he leaves no room for G-d, is the very antithesis of the Jewish ideal.
Always tell the truth?
By Rabbi Arye Forta
When King Saul sent his soldiers to kill David, his wife Michal helped him slip away, disguised his bed to make it appear that he was in it and told Saul's men, "He is sick", (I Samuel 19:12-14). Had she told the truth, David would have been murdered.
Similarly, a clothes' shop may provide customers with plastic bags bearing its name and logo as well as the words " London, Paris, Rome, Milan, New York". Of course, nowhere is it stated that the shop actually has branches in these cities, so no-one can accuse the proprietor of deceit. But the list is calculated to give the impression that the shop is part of a huge, international chain.
These are examples of geneivas da'as, leading someone to draw unwarranted -- and false -- conclusions. Our sages recognised the need to compete in business and regarded it as legitimate for manufacturers or salespeople to praise their product. They even permitted shopkeepers to attract custom by giving away free gifts (in Talmudic times, shopkeepers used to give children nuts) even though they had no connection with the product being marketed. But geneivas da'as is totally forbidden.
Perhaps the key to making truth workable lies in the following Midrashic story: One day Truth came into the world. She went to a big city expecting to be greeted with joy, but instead everyone turned their backs on her. The same thing happened in city after city; Truth was shunned everywhere. Saddened, Truth left the towns, and sat down by the roadside and wept.
Along came Parable, and asked her, "Why are you crying?" Truth told him what had happened. "I just don't understand why people turn away from me, " she sobbed . "Well," said Parable, "just look at you. You are naked. That's why no-one wants to acknowledge you. Come, I will clothe you. " So Parable clothed Truth, and wherever she went people accepted her.
Truth is an important Jewish ideal. Yet, like all ideals, it has to function in the multiform conditions of real life. Like everything else in halachah and Jewish values, our rabbis made the ideal workable in their characteristically practical manner while, the same time, using it to ennoble the reality in which we live and
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