The Truth
Yom Kippur: September 16, 2002/5763
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit

I want to begin my words this morning with a story from one of my favorite storytellers, Jane Yolen. It's a story about the nature of truth. Once upon a time there was a man who was in all things successful and comfortable. He had a fine family, money enough to treat his friends and a craft for which he was justifiably proud. He had an honest name and an untroubled heart. Yet, still he was not completely happy. "I must know Truth," he said to his wife. And because she was wise enough to know that his unhappiness would, in the end, be her own, his wife said to the man, "the you must seek her until you find her." So she helped him pack his bag and sent him out on the road a beggar after Truth. The man searched in town and villages. He looked for Truth in the city streets. He made his way into farmlands and out to seacoasts, through deserts and waste lands and after many sleepless nights and tired days, in a small cave atop a vast mountain, he found her. She was not at all what he expected. Truth was a wizened old woman with only a single tooth left in a puckered mouth. Her eyes were rheumy; her skin was drawn and crackled as parchment over prominent bones. Her hair hung in greasy strands on her shoulders. But when she gestured to the man with a hand crabbed with age and called him into the cave, her voice was low and lyrical and pure, and it was thus that he knew that he had found Truth at last. He spent a year and a day by the old woman's side and learned all that she had to teach. And at the end of that time, he said to her, "My lady Truth, I left my wife and my family, my hearth and my friends to be by your side and to learn from you. Now I am ready and must go home. But still, I would do something for you in exchange. What can I do ?" Truth looked at him and cocked her head to one side. She held up an ancient finger. "When you talk of me, she said, "tell them I am young and beautiful."

When I first heard that story, I thought, "So much for truth." But I kept thinking about this story because telling the truth is often so complicated and so important. How truthful we are shapes the character of our relationship with our friends, our family, the people with whom we work and study. Essentially, the process of teshuvah we engage in on Yom Kippur is about getting to the truth: Telling ourselves the truth about our actions over the past year. Being able to come to our friends and honestly admit what we have done wrong. Being able to, metaphorically stand before God and speak without deceit or falseness. Even the solemn Kol Nidrei declaration of last night is an ancient formula to protect us from inadvertently making false vows and oaths. What does the Jewish tradition teach about truth and how can that help our process of teshuvah during this Yom Kippur?

I was taught that one should never lie for two reasons. The first is that lying is wrong. The second is that you always get caught. While it is clearly wrong to lie, truth in the rabbinic tradition is a complicated topic. On one hand, the rabbis are unequivocal about the importance of telling the truth. On the other, there are times when other concerns, such as peace, or sensitivity to a person's feelings, allow us to temper our words.

The rabbis like to talk about truth in grand terms and teach that the world only stands when it rests on a foundation of truth. The rabbis looked at the Hebrew word emet and explained how it made a firm base for the world because it was make up of the first, middle and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Going deeper, the rabbis said that another name for the Torah is "emet," truth and even going deeper than that, the rabbis said that one of the names of God is "Truth." Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel teaches "The world stands on three things: justice, truth and peace." He goes on to explain how truth is the basic for peace and justice. After all, there is no need for justice where there is peace and truth (trust between people) is a pre-requisite for establishing a peaceful society so, it all comes back to truth. Think of how disruptive it is to a society when truth is absent. I think of our former president and even though the lies he told had nothing to do with the government, they became deeply disruptive to the nation. On the other hand, I think of certain organizations that really work well and a lot of that success happens specifically when people established deep trust in one another.

The rabbis teach that even small, harmless lies are forbidden. "I must have stayed up until four in the morning working on that paper," when you actually stayed up until 2:30. Even through these petty lies don't impact on another's person, the rabbis forbid them because they habituate you to telling lies. They quote a verse from the prophet Jeremiah, "They have taught their tongues to tell lies." If you get used to saying little things that aren't true, it becomes just so much easier to move on to bigger lies.

Sometimes we think that the reason we tell the truth is because of our obligation to be truthful to another person, that is, it's a relational obligation. But rabbinic tradition implies that telling the truth is often more about maintaining your own integrity. Rabbi Akiba explains this and says that you are obligated to keep a promise even if you only make it in your heart. There's a famous story of Rav Safra who was in the middle of praying the Ameda when a merchant walked up to him and offered to buy some jewelry that Rav Safra was selling. The buyer named a specific price and Rav Safra made a mental note that the price was fine but the rule is that if you are in the middle of the Amida, you're not supposed to stop for interruptions, so he just kept praying. Now, the merchant thought that Rav Safra was ignoring him because his offer was too low so the merchant increased his offer and this happened a couple of times before Rav Safra finished the Amida and could talk to the guy. Even though the offer had doubled, Rav Safra insisted on selling the jewelry to the merchant for the first price because that was what he had agreed to "in his heart."

Here, the rabbis are teaching that we tell the truth even more for ourselves than for other people. This reminded me of a late night discussion with a bunch of friends. One friend said that he wouldn't cheat on his wife even if she never would find out because he couldn't bear to look into the eyes of this person he loved and know that he was not telling her the truth. He said, "It wouldn't matter if she never knew. I would know and that would kill part of this precious relationship that we share together."

Still, the rabbis say that there are some situations where it is permissible to tell minor lies, lies of omission, if the lie promotes peace. We learn this from the story of Abraham and Sarah in the Torah, when God tells Sarah she will have a son, Sarah laughs and says, "But I'm old and I'm going to have a child? With my husband so old!" When God relates Sarah's words back to Abraham, God tells him, Sarah said, "Am I going to have child, as old as I am?" The rabbis comment that God lied and left out the part where Sarah called Abraham old, so as not to hurt Abraham's feelings. Sometimes the compassionate thing is not to tell the full truth when the full truth will do no good, but only cause pain or hurt.

This idea is developed further in a famous section of the Talmud when the rabbis deal with how to celebrate with a bride at a wedding. You might be familiar with this passage. It was the custom some 2000 years ago that at every wedding, there were certain wedding songs that the quests sang to the bride. One of them praised the bride for being graceful and beautiful. And much like we sing "Happy Birthday" at birthdays, then everyone sang "The Graceful and Beautiful Bride Song" at weddings. So, the rabbis asked the difficult question: what if the bride is lame or God forbid, disfigured, or extremely unattractive? Do you still sing the song saying she is graceful and beautiful? There were two opposing schools and the school of Shammi said, haven't we learned that we always have to tell the truth? If she's not beautiful or graceful, then don't sing the song. The school of Hillel said, Shammi, you are being extremely narrow in your interpretation here. The truth is larger than a narrow, literal interpretation. A bride is always beautiful and besides, what benefit is there to disparaging a bride on her wedding day? Sing the song. The rabbis are teaching that we have to look at a much larger context when we decide how we determine and truth in our lives.

In our lives today, telling the truth is hard, especially when children are away at college. It's not necessarily a great idea to share every details of your life with your parents. Too much truth might only lead to conflict and there's a natural desire to conceal certain things for the sake of keeping the peace. The problem is that if you conceal important parts of yourself, essential experiences that are shaping you and the way the you see the world, this dishonestly is bound to create a sense of distance between you and your parents. We change as we get older but if you keep presenting yourself as if none of those changes have happened, your parents can't help but relate to you as the same person who graduated high school, months or years ago. I'm not saying that children must give their parents a detailed description of your more colorful adventures, or that parents should tell children about all the intimate details of their lives. Human beings can only stand so much honesty. If you don't find some truthful way to show the people you love who you are and what's now important to you, how can you expect to have a real relationship with them? The key is finding the right balance. What do you conceal for the sake of peace and what do you reveal for the sake of a deeper relationship and connection? Throughout Yom Kippur, we reflect, confess and hopefully think deeply about who we are, what we have done and who we wish to become during the coming year. I hope we will have the courage to speak the truth and the sensitivity to best know how to present that truth to the people who so important in our lives. May we be sealed for a blessing in the book of life.