This article is part of The Virtuous Human Series ^[1].

Just getting back from Israel I’ve learned some incredible lessons from some of the worlds most renowned Rabbis. Unlike the birthright trip to Israel that I went on last year, this wasn’t about sight-seeing, it was about having a spiritual experience and acquiring ancient wisdom.

Honesty — Truthful; sincere; not lieing or cheating.

Truthfulness — Corresponding to reality; true.

What I’ve learned is that honesty and truthfulness are two distinct terms, and honesty is only the proper choice if it is upholding truthfulness at the same time. When honesty goes against truthfulness, it takes away from the essence of who you are, and serves as a hindrance in your personal growth.

It might seem counter intuitive at first glance that giving up honesty could possibly be a good thing. Furthermore, it might seem paradoxical to give up honesty for being truthful. Aren’t these two words synonymous?

While honesty is the act of not lieing, truthfulness involves upholding a deeper level truth, even if it takes some lieing to make it work. This is a lesson I learned from Rabbi Tversky in Jerusalem, and I’ll give you a couple of examples.

When Lieing Is Truthful

The first example he gave was of a Jewish man renting a room in the apartment of a Christian woman during the holocaust. The Nazis’ were going around from house to house looking for Jews to arrest and kill. Sometimes when a non-Jewish person opened the door it was enough for the Nazis’ to hear “there are no Jews here” in order for them to move on to the next house.

Sounds easy enough. The Jewish man and Christian woman were on very amiable terms. There’s no reason for her to become a conspiritor in his murder. Wrong. The woman said “I am an honest Christian, I have never lied in my life, and if the Nazis’ ask me if there are any Jews in my apartment, I will have to tell them about you.”

As you can imagine the Jewish tenent was very distraught upon hearing this from his landlord. It meant certain death for him. Thinking quickly on his feet he came up with a solution that would work for the both of them. He told the woman that since he was renting the room it was technically his, and if the Nazis’ were to ask, she could safely say that “there are no Jews in MY apartment.” And so she did, and the Jewish tenant was safe. This truthfulness, to being a good person, and not a conspirator in the Nazi murder went above and beyond honesty.

Another example that I heard from Rabbi Jonathan Shippel is of breaking the news to someone in bad health. Particularly telling an elderly sick person about a calamity that is occuring with someone near and dear to them. At one point Rabbi Shippel was faced with a situation where a doctor was to tell a 93 year old woman of her husband’s cancer. To make a long story short, she died two days after hearing the terrible news, while her husband lived for several more years in good health.

The doctor had basically killed this woman by communicating this information to her, against what the Rabbi had advised him to do. The doctor was just doing his job, and being honest, but he wasn’t being truthful to the greater cause, which is making sure people are living healthy.

When honesty fails to be on the same wavelength as truthfulness it must be abandoned. In this way, a lie will be the truth.

If you have any stories of where you had to tell a lie to uphold truthfulness please share it in the comments below.

This post is part of The Virtuous Human Series ^[1]. There will be many articles in this series — make sure you subscribe ^[2] so you don’t miss a thing!

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