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From the Rabbi's Desk Truth and Lies In one of the stories of the wise men of Chelm a humble Jew asks the Rabbi: “Why is it that the rich drink cream while the poor drink sour milk? What can be done about this injustice?” The Rabbi replies: “The solution is simple. What we must do is just switch the labels on the bottles. Then the rich will be drinking sour milk and the poor will be drinking cream.” One of the most difficult problems facing those who cherish truth, among the “oldfashioned values” people are thinking about these days, is that skilled propagandists have been able to manipulate the meanings of words to convey connotations different from that which is ordinarily meant. Terrorist then becomes freedom fighter, protestor becomes traitor, war hero becomes opportunist. Thus, also, liberal becomes communist, Israeli becomes aggressor, and the victim becomes the criminal. All one needs to do is to repeat the big lie for the lie to become the truth. We are living in a time when it is so easy for those who control the media to twist the meanings of words into their opposites. What we need in this era of a flood tide of “information” is intensive instruction to teach people how to interpret what we are fed, how to get the truth out of the distortions and lies that bombard us at every moment. As a culture of consumers, whose economy is so heavily dependent on our eagerness to ingest, it is all the more important that we know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Do we really need to consume everything because if we don’t our economy will falter and collapse? Are we therefore condemned to wallow in a culture of lies, junk, needless things, shlock art and music? As a religious community that cherishes truth as a genuine moral value, we should strive to beware of what we accept as “truth,” “moral values,” “art,” “piety,” and even “a friend of the Jews.” ~ Rabbi Harold Spivack Excerpted from the December 2004 bulletin (PDF)
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