Because your interactions with your wife or husband are more than anyone else—it’s like a hundred people in one day—and so you’ll be judged more for that. But it applies to anyone. Neighbors, friends, your boss, your mother and father. Tell people, “Oh, I’m so happy to see you.” You’re not so happy, but you’re saying the truth the way Hashem wants.
Now, of course we understand that a person can’t be a liar. It’s a big sin! Some people exaggerate and tell stories that never happened. Or when they tell the story that they saw in the street, they add details and make it a little more exaggerated than it was. That’s a very wrong middah, to be in the habit of saying falsehood for no reason. No. As much as possible, a person should train themselves not to exaggerate, not to bend the truth. Everybody should train themselves in emes as much as possible. However, if the emes hurts, don’t say it. You can’t speak straight emes all the time—it’s chessed v’emes that counts. We walk in the ways of Hashem: ̇∆מ¡‡∆ו „∆ס∆ח בַר¿ו.
Part III. The Truth Hurts
The Soul Doctor
Now, once we understand what emes means, how careful we have to be with the words that come out of our mouths—we have to twist ourselves like a pretzel in order that the ‘truth’ shouldn’t hurt—so we come now to the big problem of healing ourselves of our aveiros. Because we’re sick and we need doctors. We need to hear diagnoses. Not diagnosis—plural, diagnoses. We all need to hear the truth.
You know why? Because there will be a Day of Judgment. And ‡ָל¿ּ„¿רַּב ן≈הֹּכ ‡ָּבַ‡ רַמָ‡ – Aba Kohen Bardala said, “הָח≈כֹוּ ַ̇ה םֹוּיƒמּנוָל יֹו‡ יןƒּ„ַה םֹוּיƒמּנוָל יֹו‡ – Alas for us on the Day of Judgment because we’re going to be terrified. לָּכ ַיחƒכֹיו¿ו ‡ּהו¿ךּרוָּב ׁ ֹ̆ו„ָּ ַ̃ה ‡ֹבוָּי∆ׁ ̆¿כƒל„ָח∆‡¿ו „ָח∆‡ – Because when Hashem comes to rebuke, you’ll be dumbstruck with terror.” (Bereishis Rabbah 93:10). We'll stand in front of Him, and He’ll say to us, “This is you! You did this and that! You were this and that!” And all of a sudden we'll see who we really are. We'll be shocked. Me?! All our lives we thought we were something better.
Preparing for Judgment Day
So the question is, how are we going to be prepared for that day? If all you ever hear is the soft babbling brook of compliments, you’ll never discover anything about yourself. You’ll live all your life in error. And so we should want people to come and to tell us the truth that hurts; we want to know about our faults now, not when it will be too late.
But actually, who wants to hear it? Almost nobody. It means us—we, the ones sitting here, we don't want to hear the truth. We want people to caress us. “You're a nice fellow.” “You're a good boy.” That's what we want to hear all the time. That's honey to us. But as soon as somebody tells us a criticism, we know he's our enemy.
When a person seeks the truth, he’s willing to hear the true truth. He goes over to his rebbi and says, “Rebbi, I want you to tell me the truth whenever you see something wrong in me.”
That will happen once, maybe, in a thousand years. Once in my whole career a boy in the mesivta where I was mashgiach said to me, “I want you to tell me all my faults whenever you see something wrong.” I nearly fell off my chair. I didn't do it, by the way. Because he wasn't ready for it. But it's a good gesture at least. At least it should creep into our minds this idea that when it comes to ourselves, we should want to hear the true truth, the truth that hurts.
The Chessed V’Emes of Criticizing
And so we come to a very important subject. Because that’s for ourselves—that’s what we should be willing to endure. And even if the art of criticism has died out (see Arachin 16b), what can we do? In order to improve ourselves we’re willing to have amateurs criticize us. That’s why you're lucky if you have a father and a mother who criticize you—you should feel that you're a fortunate child indeed. If you have a wife who criticizes you, you should feel it's a big break. And even if they’re amateurish in their criticism and it hurts, no matter. At least you have somebody to tell you the truth.
But what about others? What about the mitzvah of tochacha, of telling others? Because according to what we’re saying now, it's the biggest chessed for everyone to know the truth about themselves. Is he justifying himself? How many sins does he have that he could still rectify in this world before it is too late? How many middos could he change? How many wrong attitudes, hashkafos, does he have that are contrary to the Torah?
How good it would be if he could create for himself a Torah mind in this world. Because there will someday come a time when the truth will be shown to him, and the truth will hurt more than the biggest kind of punishment that's in Gehinom. The truth he sees then will be his biggest Gehinom! He’ll be faced suddenly by the truth that strikes him between the eyes like a bar of metal! And just when it’s too late to do anything about it! Ach! We’ll cry out a הָרָמּו הָלֹו„¿ּ‚ הָ ָ̃ﬠ¿ז bigger than Eisav.
And therefore, even though it’s a gemilus chassadim, a great kindliness, to tell people the truth they have to hear, we have to come back to what it means ‘emes.’ Because emes means to tell it in such a way that they’ll accept it. It means to do it in such a way that they’ll be willing to listen.
Crooked Criticism
Suppose you're dealing with somebody who has a crooked mind. And the truth is, the mind is the most twisted thing. The navi Yirmiyah said that: לֹכƒמ ב≈לַה בֹ ָ̃ﬠ – Man’s mind is more bent than anything else (Yirmiyahu 17:9). So how are you going to put a straight thought into his crooked mind? Let's say you want to put a straight bar into a crooked place. You can't do it. You have to take the bar and twist it so it should fit into his crooked mind. That's all you can do. So ׁ ̆≈ּ ̃ƒע םƒע — with a crooked mind, לָּ ַּ̇פ¿ ̇ƒּ ̇ — make yourself crooked (Tehillim 18:27).
If somebody will come today and tell us straight from the shoulder this and this and this, something we can't accept, we'll never listen to him. So Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “I don't want you to say that. It's not emes.” You twist it a little and then put it in.
So when you want to talk to somebody—let's say here's a man who has a TV in his house. So you can't tell him, “TV?! It's a moshav leitzim, a house of rishus. In such a house everybody is yordei Gehinom, no question about it.”
Now, actually that’s the truth. To listen every night to gentile leitzim and reshaim, the whole house becomes defiled with wickedness. No question what's going to happen in such a house. It could be they’ll lose their chelek in Olam Haba. But you can't say that. Once you say that then you'll never see that person again. Because he has a crooked mind.
The Fine TV Man
So what should you do with him? You have to talk to him in a way that he understands, a different type of truth: “I have to tell you,” you say. “You know you're a fine man. You have a fine house. You're a shomer Shabbos. You have kashrus, taharas hamishpacha. A house like yours, I think you can accomplish a great deal in your house. It’s a kli, a receptacle for greatness. Such a house should strive now to get more Torah attitudes.”
Oh, he's willing now. When he hears such things, he's willing to listen. Don't mention anything about the TV. That's a half year later. You have to be a Yaakov! Eisav was a straight shooter; that’s why he became a failure.
Of course, it depends where you're speaking, if you're talking in Williamsburg or Flatbush. In Flatbush you’ll have to twist more than in Williamsburg. And if you're talking let's say in a small town in Connecticut, so there you'll twist a little more. But whatever it is, to a great extent with everyone, it’s לָּ ַּ̇פ¿ ̇ƒּ ̇ ׁ ̆≈ּ ̃ƒע םƒע. A straight bar in our crooked minds wouldn't fit in. So today we need to deal with people in the way their minds are—with a twist.
And today that’s the truth. It doesn’t mean you don’t say anything. You must! You have to help your fellow Jew. But if it won't be effective to say the truth then don't say the truth—say a half truth. Say a sheker. םֹלוָׁ ̆ י≈כ¿רַּ„ י≈נ¿ּפƒמ ֹ̇וּנַׁ ̆¿ל רָּ ּ̇מו – You can say a falsehood as long as it's going to have a good effect and lead people gradually and slowly to the truth.
Career Mistakes
That's why in the beginning of Mishlei what does he say there? What's the purpose of Mishlei? הָמ¿רָﬠ םƒי‡ָ ̇¿פƒל ̇≈ ָ̇ל – To give to the fools cunning (1:4). The purpose of Mishlei is to teach cunning. You have to learn how to handle people with diplomacy. You have to be a diplomat, and diplomacy means rama’us. You have to be akev, cunning, to deal with people. Everybody needs diplomacy today. Nobody can be given straight from the shoulder a punch, a jolt. Once you do that, it's all over. You'll never see him again.
I look back on my career. I made mistakes like that too. Once a man came here with his son. His son was a ba’al teshuvah. He had a beard, a fine young man.
The father said, “I have a complaint against my son.”
“What's the complaint?”
So he tells me that the son refuses to kiss his mother-in-law.
I said to the father, “Of course he can’t. It's assur al pi Torah.”
The father said, “Who cares what the Torah says?”
“Oooh,” I said. “Then get out of here.”
I made a mistake. I made a big mistake. The son never came again. He was coming week after week and he was making very much progress. Now he never came again.
You can't talk that way. You have to use diplomacy. That's the ratzon Hashem. לָּ ַּ̇פ¿ ̇ƒּ ̇ ׁ ̆≈ּ ̃ƒע עם – With a crooked mind you have to make yourself crooked.
Emes L’Yaakov
Now, it’s with this thought in mind that we have to approach everything because everybody is an ikesh. Everybody is stubborn. We especially, but also our friends, our children, our spouses, our neighbors. Now, you can't keep quiet all the time. Sometimes you must speak up. But you have to be careful—you might have to speak words that are not truthful words.
Children, talmidim, they all need training. רָיַﬠ„≈לָּוƒי םָ„ָ‡ ‡∆ר∆ּפ – A man is born a wild donkey, and so he has to hear the truth. But the truth means what Hashem wants you to say. Saying words that hurt somebody without having the desired effect, no. That's insanity, to say whatever you feel in your heart. You have to say what's beneficial, what’s effective.
You can never gain your point by a head-on collision. יםƒעָמ¿ׁ ̆ƒנ ַ̇חַנ¿ּב יםƒמָכֲח י≈ר¿בƒּ„ – When are the words listened to? When it's said gently. But not only the tone; the words too. You have to use a certain amount of perspicacity, a certain amount of judgment.
And that’s called emes. That’s emes l’Yaakov, the ways of truth that we learn from Yaakov. Because it’s the enduring ideals of the Torah, the ideals of Torah and mitzvos and middos tovos, that's considered the greatest emes there is.
And that’s one of the important principles of successful living. It’s the true truth! Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “I want you to be truthful according to My emes, and by Me it has to be an emes of chessed—an emes that produces chessed and produces results.”
Have a Wonderful Shabbos
Feeling inspired & uplifted? Help spread that feeling to Jews everywhere! Toras Avigdor strives to spread Rav Miller's Torah & hashkafah freely around the world, supported only by idealists like YOU who are looking to bring yidden closer to Hashem. Join this movement NOW! torasavigdor.org/give 732-844-3670
