54 | DECEMBER 28 • 2023 
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fter the death of 
Jacob, Joseph’s 
brothers were afraid. 
Years earlier, when he had 
revealed his true identity to 
them, he appeared to have 
forgiven them 
for selling him 
as a slave. Yet the 
brothers were 
not wholly reas-
sured. Maybe 
Joseph did not 
mean what he 
said. Perhaps 
he still harbored resentment. 
Might the only reason he had 
not yet taken revenge was 
respect for Jacob. 
There was a convention in 
those days that there was to be 
no settling of scores between 
siblings in the lifetime of the 
father. We know this from an 
earlier episode. After Jacob 
had taken his brother’s bless-
ing, Esau said, “The days of 
mourning for my father are 
near; then I will kill my broth-
er Jacob” (Gen. 27:41). 
So, the brothers came before 
Joseph and said: “Your father 
left these instructions before 
he died: ‘This is what you 
are to say to Joseph: I ask 

you to forgive your brothers 
the sins and the wrongs they 
committed in treating you so 
badly.’ Now please forgive the 
sins of the servants of the God 
of your father.” When their 
message came to him, Joseph 
wept. (Gen. 50:16-17)
The text makes it as plain 
as possible that the story they 
told Joseph was a lie. If Jacob 
had really said those words, 
he would have said them to 
Joseph himself, not to the 
brothers. The time to have 
done so was on his deathbed 
in the previous chapter. The 
brothers’ tale was what we 
may call a “white lie.” Its pri-
mary aim was not to deceive 
but to ease a potentially explo-
sive situation. Perhaps that 
is why Joseph wept, under-
standing that his brothers 
still thought him capable of 
revenge.
The Sages derived a prin-
ciple from this text. Mutar 
le-shanot mipnei ha-shalom: “It 
is permitted to tell an untruth 
(literally, “to change” the facts) 
for the sake of peace.” A white 
lie is permitted in Jewish law.
This is not the only place 
where the Sages invoked this 

principle. They even attributed 
it to God Himself. When the 
angels came to visit Abraham 
to tell him and Sarah that they 
were about to have a child, 
“Sarah laughed to herself as 
she thought, ‘
After I am worn 
out and my lord is old, will I 
now have this pleasure?’” God 
then asked Abraham, “Why 
did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will 
I really have a child, now that 
I am old?’” (Gen. 18:12-13).
God did not mention that 
Sarah believed that not only 
was she too old to have a child 
— she believed that Abraham 
was as well (this turned out to 
be quite untrue: Abraham had 
six more children after Sarah’s 
death). The Sages inferred 
that God did not mention it 
because He did not want there 
to be bad feeling between hus-
band and wife. Here, too, the 
Sages said: It is permitted to 
change the facts for the sake 
of peace.
It is clear that the Sages 
needed both episodes to estab-
lish the principle. Had we only 
known about the Sarah case, 
we could not infer that it is 
permitted to tell a white lie. 
God did not tell a white lie 

about Sarah. He merely did 
not tell Abraham the whole 
truth. Had we only known 
about the case of Joseph’s 
brothers, we could not have 
inferred that what they did 
was permitted. Perhaps it was 
forbidden, and that is why 
Joseph wept. The fact that 
God Himself had done some-
thing similar is what led the 
Sages to say that the brothers 
were justified.

IMPORTANCE OF TACT
What is at stake here is an 
important feature of the moral 
life, despite the fact that we 
seem to be speaking of no 
more than social niceties: 
tact. The late Sir Isaiah Berlin 
pointed out that not all values 
coexist in a kind of platonic 
harmony. His favorite example 
was freedom and equality. 
You can have a free economy, 
but the result will be inequal-
ity. You can have economic 
equality, communism, but the 
result will be a loss of free-
dom. In the world as currently 
configured, moral conflict is 
unavoidable.
This was an important 
fact, though one about which 

When Can 
 We Lie?

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

