This week’s Parashah
is very dear to my heart, being my son Eyal’s Bar Mitzvah Parashah. Although it seems only yesterday it was
seven years ago that we were busy studying the text’s lessons whilst I prepared
him for his Big Day. We were living in
Germany at the time and now it’s two countries later – USA and Australia. Where do the years go??!
Remember the Dan Hill hit song of 1977, Sometimes When We Touch? Hill, a Canadian songwriter and performer,
was still recording in 2010 but has only had two international hit songs, of
which Sometimes When We Touch was his first and his biggest. Perhaps you remember the opening lines of the
song:
You ask me if I love you
And I choke on my reply
I’d rather hurt you honestly
Than deceive you with a lie.
The premise of the song is a dilemma that each one of us has faced at
times. We can tell the truth and hurt
someone. Or we can tell a lie and spare
someone’s feelings. But if we do tell
a lie, then in the long run we risk causing more damage. I’ll give you an example.
Say Clara cooks some dish that I don’t like. I know, I know…that’s hard to imagine. But say she does. I can tell her the truth, and ask her not to
cook it again. But that, at the very
real risk of hurting her feelings.
There’s nothing in the Torah that says we must always tell the
truth. Only when giving witness in a
trial. But for certain pragmatic
reasons, there’s no sin in telling a lie.
At least, a little ‘white’ lie.
Such as: Honey, that dish was very
tasty! What a successful trial cook! So maybe it wasn’t true. But I avoided hurting my wife’s feelings, and
maintained shalom bayit. That’s a
good thing, right?
And then? The next week, she
cooks it again. After all, I told her
how much I liked it the first time. And
then not too far in the future again.
And again. And then finally, sometime
in the future, she sees me picking at the dish and asks, exasperated: “But I thought you liked this dish??!” And that’s when I finally have to tell
her the truth: “No, honey…actually, to
tell you the truth, I don’t like it at all.”
So, sooner or later the truth does come out. And when it does, it causes more hurt
than if I had just trusted Clara to be able to handle that I wasn’t crazy about
the dish the first time. Because of my
denial of the truth, I’ve caused unnecessary tension and made a situation far
worse than it had to be.
Now the above is, obviously, a relatively ‘light’ matter. But what about in ‘heavy’ matters? It’s the same principle. And it points to the choice that Bilaam had
to make.
Bilaam was a pagan prophet. He
gets a mixed review in our tradition. On
one hand, he ends up blessing the people Israel. This, on the instructions of God. And in contravention to the commission he was
given by Balak, the King of Moab.
Balak hires Bilaam to curse Israel, for Balak fears this people. Bilaam agrees, but on the way to do so, he is
repeatedly told not to even think about carrying out his commission. He is only to bless Israel. Bilaam hears God’s instruction loud and
clear, and tries to waffle, but God knows the heart of the prophet. He knows that Bilaam is going to curse
Israel. And how could it be otherwise? Balak has offered Bilaam untold riches and
prestige if he will carry out the commission.
Although Bilaam is clearly in touch with God, he clearly sees himself as
a free agent. Instead of telling Balak
unequivocally from the start that he won’t be accepting the commission, he
begins travelling to the designated place to do so. This, whilst telling God that in fact he
doesn’t plan to carry it out. But in the
end, God takes away Bilaam’s free will and takes control of the situation. Bilaam blesses Israel with the words that we
repeat in the morning service when we sing Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov/Mishkinotecha
Yisrael: How goodly are your tents of
Jacob/Your habitations, O Israel. Bilaam
carries out God’s will, but because he is forced, there is no merit in it for
him.
So what does this have to do with the song Sometimes When We
Touch? Or with the notion of lying
to your wife about her cooking? Only
this: when we are dishonest, there is
always some price to pay. Whether that
dishonesty is in a trivial matter, or in one that speaks to someone’s deepest
emotions, or in an ethical principle.
Whether it is in a matter that could be called ‘trivial,’ or one of
obvious great import. Dishonesty will
ultimately come to no good.
Diplomats and generals all grasp this.
Clausewitz saw war as just an extension of statecraft, a step beyond
diplomacy. Most practitioners of both
disciplines would disagree. But either
way, in the realms of both diplomacy and war, deception can only be used most
sparingly. As in one time. After that, your adversary will not trust
your words or your actions.
As in the great realms of war and peace, so too in the smaller realms
where the rest of us operate. If we
expect our words and deeds to carry any credibility, if we expect to be taken
seriously, then we must operate in a framework of clarity. The truth can be hard to swallow. But a lie will likely cause greater damage. Shabbat shalom.
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