DECEMBER 28 • 2023 | 55
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Judaism seems never to have 
been in doubt. There is, for 
example, a powerful moment 
in Tanach when King David’s 
son Absalom mounted a coup 
d’etat against his father. David 
was forced to flee. Eventually 
there was a battle between 
Absalom’s troops and David’s. 
Absalom, who was hand-
some and had fine hair, was 
caught by it when it became 
entangled in the branches of a 
tree. Left hanging there, Joab, 
captain of David’s army, killed 
him.
When David heard the 
news, he was overcome with 
grief: “The King was shak-
en. He went up to the room 
over the gateway and wept. 
As he went, he said: ‘O, my 
son Absalom! My son, my 
son Absalom! If only I had 
died instead of you — O 
Absalom, my son, my son!’” 2 
Samuel 18:33
Joab was brutal in his 
response to the King: “Today 
you have humiliated all your 
men, who have just saved your 
life … You love those who 
hate you and hate those who 
love you … Now go out and 
encourage your men.” 2 Sam. 
19:6-8
David’s grief at the loss 
of his son conflicts with his 
responsibilities as head of state 
and his loyalty to the troops 
who have saved his life. Which 
comes first: his duties as a 
father or as a king?
The existence of conflicting 
values means that the kind of 
morality we adopt and society 
we create depend not only on 
the values we embrace but also 
on the way we prioritize them. 
Prioritizing equality over free-
dom creates one kind of soci-
ety — Soviet Communism, for 
example. Prioritizing freedom 
over equality leads to market 
economics. People in both 
societies may value the same 
things but they rank them 

differently in the scale of val-
ues, and thus how they choose 
when the two conflict.
That is what is at stake in 
the stories of Sarah’s laughter 
and Joseph’s brothers. Truth 
and peace are both values, but 
which do we choose when they 
conflict? Not everyone among 
the rabbinic Sages agreed.
There is, for example, a 
famous argument between 
the schools of Hillel and 
Shammai as to what to say 
about the bride at a wedding. 
(See Ketubot 16b) The custom 
was to say that “The bride 
is beautiful and graceful.” 
Members of the School of 
Shammai, however, were not 
prepared to say so if, in their 
eyes, the bride was not beauti-
ful and graceful. For them, the 
supreme value was the Torah’s 
insistence on truth: “Keep far 
from falsehood” (Ex. 23:7). 
The School of Hillel did 
not accept this. Who was to 
judge whether the bride was 
beautiful and graceful? Surely 
the bridegroom himself. So to 
praise the bride was not mak-
ing an objective statement that 
could be tested empirically. 
It was simply endorsing the 
bridegroom’s choice. It was a 
way of celebrating the couple’s 
happiness.
Courtesies are often like 
this. Telling someone how 
much you like the gift they 
have brought, even if you 
don’t, or saying to someone, 
“How lovely to see you” 
when you were hoping to 
avoid them, is more like good 
manners than an attempt to 
deceive. We all know this, and 
thus no harm is done, as it 
would be if we were to tell a 
lie when substantive interests 
are at stake.

MERCY AND TRUTH
More fundamental and phil-
osophical is an important 
Midrash about a conversa-

tion between God and the 
angels as to whether human 
beings should be created 
at all: “Rabbi Shimon said: 
When God was about to cre-
ate Adam, the ministering 
angels split into contending 
groups. Some said, ‘Let him 
be created.’ Others said, ‘Let 
him not be created.’ That is 
why it is written: ‘Mercy and 
truth collided, righteousness 
and peace clashed’” (Psalms 
85:11).
“Mercy said, ‘Let him be 
created, because he will do 
merciful deeds.’
“Truth said, ‘Let him not be 
created, for he will be full of 
falsehood.’
“Righteousness said, ‘Let 
him be created, for he will do 
righteous deeds.’
“Peace said, ‘Let him not be 
created, for he will never cease 
quarrelling.’
“What did the Holy One, 
blessed be He, do? He took 
truth and threw it to the 
ground.
“The angels said, ‘Sovereign 
of the universe, why do You 
do thus to Your own seal, 
truth? Let truth arise from the 
ground.’
“Thus it is written, ‘Let 
truth spring up from the 
earth.’” Psalms 85:12
This is a challenging text. 
What exactly were the angels 
saying? What does it mean to 
say that “God took truth and 
threw it to the ground?” And 
what happened to the claim 
made by the angel of Peace 
that humans “will never cease 
quarrelling?”
I interpret it as mean-
ing that humans are 
destined to conflict so long 
as contending groups each 
claim to have a monopoly of 
the truth. The only way they 
will learn to live at peace is 
by realizing that they, finite 
as all humans are, will never 
in this life achieve truth as it 

is in Heaven. For us, truth is 
always partial, fragmentary, 
the view from somewhere 
and not, as philosophers 
sometimes say, “the view 
from nowhere.”
This deep insight is, I 
believe, the reason why the 
Torah is multi-perspectival, 
why Tanach contains so many 
different kinds of voices, why 
Mishnah and Gemara are 
structured around argument, 
and why Midrash is built on 
the premise that there are 
“70 faces” to Torah. No other 
civilization I know has had 
so subtle and complex an 
understanding of the nature 
of truth.
Nor has any other so valued 
peace. Judaism is not and 
never was pacifist. National 
self-defense sometimes 
requires war. But Isaiah 
and Micah were the first 
visionaries of a world in which 
“nation shall not lift up sword 
against nation.” (Is. 2:4; Mic. 
4:3) Isaiah is the poet laureate 
of peace.
Given the choice, when 
it came to interpersonal 
relations the Sages valued 
peace over truth, not least 
because truth can flourish 
in peace while it is often the 
first casualty in war. So, the 
brothers were not wrong to 
tell Joseph a lie for the sake of 
peace within the family. 
It reminded them all the 
deeper truth that not only 
their human father, now 
dead, but also their heavenly 
Father, eternally alive, wants 
the people of the covenant to 
be at peace, for how can Jews 
be at peace with the world 
if they are not at peace with 
themselves? 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan 

Sacks served as the chief rabbi of 

the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His 

teachings have been made available 

to all at rabbisacks.org. 

