Shalom Chaverim,
I hesitate to share this profound insight that the Torah teaches. It’s about Truth.
I think we are all sensing just how urgent (though absent), essential (though elusive), and precious (though mistreated), Truth is in our world today. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel teaches in Pirke Avot [Avot 1:18] that ‘the world stands on three things: on Justice, on Truth, and on Peace.” Without justice and without peace, the world cannot remain standing: society will erupt, civilization will implode, the environment will collapse. Neither can the world stay intact or upright – perhaps it will be brought to its knees – without the foundation of truth to support it.
And yet we read is this week’s Torah portion Vayera about the three messengers of God informing Abraham that the long-promised child he and his wife Sarah have waited for will at last be born, despite their being very far past child-bearing ages:
They [these messenger angels] said to him [Abraham], “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he replied, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will return to you next year, and your wife Sarah shall have a son!” Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years; Sarah had stopped having her periods. And Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “Now that I’ve lost the ability, am I to have enjoyment—with my husband so old?” Then God said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?’” [Beresheit 18: 9-13]
Among other things of note in these few verses, we read that God deliberately misquotes Sarah’s inner thoughts. Sarah laughed to herself at the notion that her aged husband could impregnate her. Yet God reports her thoughts to Abraham as not that she doubts his virility, but instead as the assumption that she herself was unable to bear a child.
In this instance, God is telling a ‘white lie.’ Certainly there are important lessons here…that ‘shalom bayit’ [‘peace in the home’, or domestic tranquility, a harmonious partnership] is, in sum, a higher value level of truth than the many daily domestic components through which it is achieved; that acts of kindness and compassion are maybe of greater importance than exactitude; or perhaps that one can – or should – go beyond the ‘letter of the law’ to protect someone else’s dignity, to avoid their dishonor or humiliation…
And yet nevertheless we have to acknowledge that God, whom we affectionately call the ‘God of Truth’ and the ‘True Judge’, reports Sarah’s words inaccurately. Is this suggesting that there is a hierarchy of truth, and that accuracy can be subsumed to achieve a ‘higher truth’? That God’s bigger plans for the world and the world’s destiny are a kind of ‘more true Truth’ to which human affairs can – must – be malleable? If so, is God the only judge or do humans allow themselves to take liberties with truth to serve what we see as a ‘higher purpose’? [Historically, humans have all-too-often assumed this liberty…and mostly with disastrous consequences.] Does this episode call Truth into question altogether so that we feel ourselves bound to claim that there is, ultimately, no truth at all?
These are difficult questions, with answers even more difficult to come by. For lovers of Truth – and we must all be lovers of Truth if there is any hope for this world – it seems (to me, anyway) that there is something very strongly hopeful about this passage. What, if anything, gives you hope for Truth in our world, whether in these verses, in the Torah portion altogether, or in anything anywhere?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Michael Schwartz