Study with Rabbi Perlin (4/16/2020)
Thursdays with Perlin: Truth: In Jewish Sources and in our World
1pm, April 16, 2020 for TBS via Zoom
Emet – Truth / Integrity
Text sheet prepared by Rabbi Joseph Meszler on Sefaria.org
Leviticus 19:1-37
(1) The Eternal spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy… (11) You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another. …(16) Do not tell false tales about your countrymen. Do not stand by the blood of your fellow: I am the Eternal. (17) You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him. (18) You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Eternal. … (35) You shall not falsify measures of length, weight, or capacity. (36) You shall have an honest balance, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I the Eternal am your God who freed you from the land of Egypt.
Proverbs 12:18-23
(18) There is blunt talk like sword-thrusts, but the speech of the wise is healing. (19) Truthful speech abides forever, a lying tongue for but a moment. … (22) Lying speech is an abomination to the Eternal, but those who act faithfully please God.
Shabbat 104a:9
They further taught: Shin: Falsehood [sheker]. Tav: Truth [emet].
Why are the letters of the word sheker adjacent to one another in the alphabet, while the letters of emet are distant from one another? That is because while falsehood is easily found, truth is found only with great difficulty. And why do the letters that comprise the word sheker all stand on one foot, and the letters that comprise the word emet stand on bases that are wide like bricks? Because the truth stands eternal and falsehood does not stand eternal.
Shabbat 55a:12
Rabbi Ḥanina said: The seal of the Holy One of Blessing is truth.
Psalms 85:11-12
(11) Faithfulness and truth meet; justice and well-being kiss.
(12) Truth springs up from the earth; justice looks down from heaven.
Bereishit Rabbah 8:5
Rabbi Simon said: When the Holy Blessing One was about to create Adam, the ministering angels formed themselves into groups and factions, some saying, “Let him be created,” while others urged, “Let him NOT be created.” Thus it is written, “Love and Truth met, righteousness and peace kissed” (Psalm 85:11).
Love (Hesed) said, “Let him be created, because he will preform acts of love.”
Truth (Emet) said, “Let him NOT be created, because he will be all falsehood.”
Righteousness (Tzedek) said, “Let him be created, because he will do righteous deeds (tzedakah).”
Peace (Shalom) said, “Let him NOT be created, because he will be all strife.”
What did the Holy Blessing One do?
God took Truth (Emet) and cast it to the ground, as it says, “You did cast down Truth to the ground” (Dan. 8:12).
The ministering angels dared say to the Holy Blessing One, “Master of the Universe, why do You humiliate Your seal (Truth)? ‘Let truth arise from the earth'”(Psalm 85:12)!
The elder Rabbi Huna of Tzipori said, While the ministering angels were arguing one with the other, the Holy Blessing One created Adam, and then said, “What are you arguing about? Adam is already created.”
Siddur Ashkenaz, Weekday, Shacharit, Preparatory Prayers, Sovereignty of Heaven (**L’olam, Shema) 1
A person should always revere God, in private (and in public), acknowledging truth and speaking truth in one’s heart (see Psalm 15)…
Prayer for Beginning Study from Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
O God of Truth deliver us.
(Reconstructionist Mahzor p.190)
Emmanuel Levinas
…It is as if the multiplicity of persons … were the condition for the plentitude of ‘absolute Truth’; as if every person, through his uniqueness were the guarantee of the revelation of a unique aspect of truth, and some of its points would never have been revealed if some people had been absent from mankind… the totality of the true is constituted from the combination of multiple people: the uniqueness of each act of listening carrying the secret of the text; the voice of Revelation, as inflected, precisely, by each person’s ear, would be necessary to the ‘Whole’ of the Truth…
Deborah Lipstadt, author of
“Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,”
Behind the lies of Holocaust denial
TED talk Posted May 2017
…Many of us have been taught to think there are facts and there are opinions — after studying deniers, I think differently. There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies. And what deniers want to do is take their lies, dress them up as opinions — maybe edgy opinions, maybe sort of out-of-the-box opinions — but then if they’re opinions, they should be part of the conversation. And then they encroach on the facts….
So why is my story more than just the story of a quirky, long, six-year, difficult lawsuit, an American professor being dragged into a courtroom by a man that the court declared in its judgment was a neo-Nazi polemicist? What message does it have? I think in the context of the question of truth, it has a very significant message. Because today, as we well know, truth and facts are under assault. Social media, for all the gifts it has given us, has also allowed the difference between facts — established facts — and lies to be flattened. …
Truth is not relative. Many of us have grown up in the world of the academy and enlightened liberal thought, where we’re taught everything is open to debate. But that’s not the case. There are certain things that are true. There are indisputable facts — objective truths. … The Earth is not flat. The climate is changing. Elvis is not alive… …
And most importantly, truth and fact are under assault. The job ahead of us, the task ahead of us, the challenge ahead of us is great. The time to fight is short. We must act now. Later will be too late.
Rabbi Perlin recommends that you watch:
TED Talk by Pamela Meyer: How to Spot a Liar
Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it, a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.