Saying Kaddish for the Truth (1,009)
Philosopher Anna Arendt (1906-1975)
Today, Monday October 7, 2024 (5 Tishri, 5785 on the Jewish calendar) marks the 1 year anniversary of the deadliest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust (shoah in Hebrew) . . . an historic catastrophe which, for reasons beyond human comprehension, millions upon millions refuse to believe ever occurred. One year ago, more than 1,200 Israeli men, women and children were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists. Many victims were raped, and over 250 were taken hostage, 35 of whom are known to have been killed while 101, including seven Americans, remain unaccounted for. With many of the bodies mutilated or burned beyond recognition - including entire families in their homes - it took forensic doctors weeks to identify them all. Israel’s response to the massacre was swift, overwhelming and astonishingly lethal. According to the official Palestinian Health Ministry, as of September 29, the official count of Gazans killed - non-combatant men, women, children as well as members of Hamas, totals more than 41,595. And within recent weeks, the Israelis have taken the battle into Lebanon, where the Iranian-backed Hezbollah functions as a parallel government. They have been lobbing missiles, rockets and drones into northern Israel for more than a year.
This coming Shabbat (The Jewish Sabbath), October 12, Jews the world over will observe Yom Kippur, the “Day of Atonement,” during which we fast for more than 24 hours, and admit and atone for a long list of sins . . . the majority of which deal with either what we put into or what comes out of our mouths. At one point in the service, we recite the Kaddish - inaccurately referred to as “the Jewish prayer for the dead” (it is, in reality, a paean to G-d and life itself). This comes in a part of the service called Yizkor, Hebrew for He shall remember. Not only will we be saying this prayer on behalf of all our deceased relatives, family members and friends . . . but collectively for the millions upon millions of nameless victims of war, famine, flood and other natural and man-made catastrophes. I for one will encourage those sitting before me to include in their prayers those Ukrainians and Russians, Gazans and Lebanese who have also lost their lives in the early stages of what I fear shall become a larger regional conflict. Not all will agree with my sentiment, and that’s OK, but I for one refuse to limit my tears .
As strange as it may seem, I am giving thought to including truth (אֶמֶת - emet) in my kaddish prayer. How’s that? How can one say recite this prayer on behalf of a concept; isn’t it meant only for mortal creatures? I suppose so, but it seems to me that for the past many years, we have been witnessing the death of what is true. I mean, it’s gotten to the point where the distance and difference between that which is demonstrably true and that which definitely false is obscenely small - what scientists refer to as the Plank Length - about 10-20 times the size of a proton. Indeed, the truth’s terminal condition has made it possible for tens - even hundreds - of millions to believe that victims are aggressors, that 0.2% of the world’s population (i.e. the Jewish people) are powerful enough to rule the entire planet; that a presidential election was stolen away (despite innumerable legal findings to the contrary); that there are more Communists in Washington D..C. than there are in the Kremlin; that Vice President Kamala Harris had, in her role as "Border Czar” (?) "let in 13,099 convicted murderers into the United States”; that “illegal Haitian immigrants” (who all had Green Cards) have been "kidnapping and eating” dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, despite a retraction from the woman who started the rumor in the first place. And most recently, IT has been claiming (against all fact) that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) can’t respond well enough to the aftermath of Hurricane Helene because it’s diverted so much money to helping migrants. This is a bald-faced lie told in the waning days of the presidential election. The truth is as obvious as the nose on your face: FEMA’s funds for handling disaster relief efforts are separate from money given to immigrant communities. Not to outdone in lunacy, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene asserted that Washington used “weather control technology” to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward V.P. Kamala Harris!
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Is it any wonder that I am likely going to be including ha-emet (“The Truth” in my kaddish prayer?
When it comes to tearing apart and explaining the history and power of lies in the public square, none has been more understanding (and understandable) than the late philosopher Hannah Arendt (that’s her in the photo at the top of this blog. In the 1960s, Arendt’s major work, The Origins of Totalitarianism was a must-read for any student of political science and political history (yours included). A Jew by birth and psychological makeup, Arendt was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Influenced by the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger, Arendt explored the relationship between truth, lies and authoritarianism. In one of her more trenchant essays during the rise of authoritarianism in 1930s Europe, she wrote;
"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."
The key point in Arendt’s statement is that as lies multiply, the result is not that the lie is believed, but that people lose faith in the truth and are increasingly susceptible to believe anything. When cynicism about truth reigns, lies operate not because they replace reality, but because they make reality wobble–a phrase Arendt employs in her essay, Truth and Politics. In that essay, Arendt argued that mass lying undermines our sense of reality by which we find our bearings in the real world:
The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.
Long, long ago, the rabbis taught a signal lesson about the difference between lies and the truth. As mentioned above, the Hebrew word for truth is emet
אמת
They noted that the word begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph), ends with the last letter of the alphabet (taf) and has the 13th letter (mem) in the middle. They also pointed out the obvious: all three letters are exactly the same size. From this they posited that When one tells the truth, they are on solid ground from beginning to the end.
Not so with a lie. The Hebrew word for “lie” is sheker
שׁקר
The 3 letters of this word, shin, quf and resh are 3 of the last 4 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Unlike emet, the 3 letters making up sheker are unbalanced; they cannot stand firm, because the middle letter (quf) causes the lie (or liar) to eventually topple over.
As I put the final words to this essay, I have decided that I will definitely say kaddish for the truth . . . and then pray for its eventual resurrection. Hear this liars of the world: your time is short. We shall not permit you to continue filling the world with half-, mis-, or untruths just for the sake of power. Hearken unto this journalists, writers and bringers of news: learn well Kant’s and Arendt’s dictum that there are no conceivable circumstances in which outright lying is morally acceptable; morality is rooted in our capacity to make free, rational choices. Broadcasting lies is, or even worse, accepting them as just another form of free speech is, in effect, an assault on morality because it aims to undermine this capacity.
To my Jewish readers:
אני מאחל לכם גמר חתימה טובה בשׁנת תשפ"ה
I send wishes that you to be completely sealed in the Book of Life in the New Year 5785.
Copyright©2024 Kurt Franklin Stone