Bits of truth

אָמַר רַב חֲנִינָא: שְׁמַע מִינַּהּ חוֹתָמוֹ שֶׁל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא ״אֱמֶת״.

“Rav Chanina said: We learn from this that the seal of the Holy One, Blessed be He, is Truth.”

Talmud Bavli, Yoma 69b

Capital Truth?

The challenge in translating the above statement in the Gemara is that Hebrew (and Aramaic for that matter) has no capital letters. So, should it be “Truth”, with an assertive, cosmic, capital “T”? Or just “truth” with a cowering, relative, small “t”?

The truth is (and the “Truth” too) that one of Judaism’s most astonishing gifts to the world was the very concept of Truth - the capitalised version. And at the time, it was radical, bizarre and intolerant.

Before-us, all there was, were narratives – national, communal and individual. Everyone had their own story, and it was obvious that each story was precious because it was meaningful to the bearer of that myth. And anyway, how could anyone ever establish or determine if it was “true”, whatever that word meant? The very notion was laughable.

Then along came the Jews who claimed, for the first time, that, actually, there is One, Objective, Universal Constant against which everything can be measured – and the name we have for it, is “G-d.” And because G-d is the Creator of reality and is the Canvas on which the cosmos unfolds, therefore, for the first time, there is a common backdrop to everything that exists, against which, space, time, deeds, thoughts, actions and morals can be calculated and evaluated exactly. Jews have become so used to this idea that we usually cannot conceive of how radical a shift it heralded in the way people thought. And sadly, we also have no recollection of the effort we made and the price we paid, to introduce Truth to a happily, relativistic world, which saw no need for a Universal judge – definitely not for their personal actions.

Just one example of how impactful this view is, lies in the very creation of the scientific method which relies on a set of astonishing assumptions, such as: natural law is constant and consistent everywhere and everywhere, throughout the universe. Einstein was stunned by the fact that these assumptions seem to hold, “You find it surprising that I think of the comprehensibility of the world to the degree that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or eternal mystery. But surely, a priori, one should expect the world to be chaotic, and not to be grasped by thought in any way...” (Lettres a Maurice Solovine, 102).

The pagan ancients did not think that the world was governed by a set of eternal equations which were mathematical, constant and omnipresent; let alone comprehensible by the finite, fallible human mind. They saw a world of chaos, and their explanations were chaotic and polytheistic. They explained the world through millions of deities driving the seemingly contradictory flows of nature – wind versus sea, light versus dark, gravity versus elevation – they saw the tensions as the inexplicable outcomes of the battle of wills between inscrutable gods. But where they saw plurality, Jews suggested a single, intelligent, intelligible, consistent, law-maintaining, measuring G-d. As John Barrow writes,

“Our Western religious tradition also endows us with the assumption that things are governed by a logic that exists independently of those things, that laws are externally imposed as though they were the decrees of a transcendent divine legislator… The current breed of candidates for the title of a "Theory of Everything" hope to provide an encapsulation of all the laws of nature into a simple and single representation. The fact that such a unification is even sought tells us something important about our expectations regarding the Universe... Our monotheistic traditions reinforce the assumption that the Universe is at root a unity, that it is not governed by different legislation in different places, neither the residue of some clash of the Titans wrestling to impose their arbitrary wills upon the Nature of things, nor the compromise of some cosmic committee.”

Theories of Everything p. 15

This concept of Capital Truth spread universally and came to undergird much of Western thinking from Plato’s theories on Forms and Ideals to the development of formalised, logical systems to provide methods to distinguish between Truth and Falsehood.

TooTrue… TwoTrue?

Now, One Truth for everyone is astonishing, but as we mentioned, it is also intolerant.

The Capital Truth is zealous and jealous; it tolerates no rival. And yet, at the very moment that Jews introduced it, they also introduced the uniquely humble and retreating acceptance that a human being can grasp that Truth very rarely, if ever. Rather, each one of us, can only reach a limited, finite perspective of that ultimate Truth, because we are limited and finite. As the Gemara teaches:

“‘Rabbi Aba said in the name of Rabbi Shemuel, “For three years the School of Shamai and the School of Hillel argued with one another – one claimed, ‘The Law is according to our opinion!’ The other claimed – ‘No! The Law is according to us!’

[Eventually] a voice from heaven rang out, ‘Both of them are speaking the Words of The Living G-d …’ ” ’ 

Talmud Bavli, Eiruvin 13b

The obvious question on the Gemara is: how could two opposite positions both be True or even True-ish?

A key answer offered by Torah scholars from the Ritva (Rabbi Yom Tov ben Avraham Isbilli, Seville, c. 1250-1330CE) to the Holy Shelah (Rabbi Y’shayahu Horowitz, Prague, c. 1565–1630CE) is that since Hashem is Infinite, the finite human mind cannot ever grasp Hashem’s Truth all at once – we only get slices of it, but we can push ourselves to comprehend ever more in breadth and depth:

“And in its aspects, apprehensions, and levels, Hashem’s Truth ascends higher and higher, without end or limit. Thus [the Torah states that when Hashem appeared on Sinai, it was with] “a great voice that did not cease”: it neither stopped nor was anything added to it, for everything is included in the mystery of a single, unified Oneness, and every particular is contained within the whole.”

Shelah, Toldot Adam Beit Hachochmah Telita’ah

And to this day, Jews have lived with and been enlivened by the tension between these two poles – the Absolute Truth which is G-d’s; and our humble striving to touch and grasp some part(s) of it, while accepting that we will always get just a slice or two of its wondrous glow. And again, we Jews have invested immense efforts in ensuring that we strive for this slice of truth, spending a lifetime on it and teaching this path to our children; and again, we have often forgotten this effort and the price we paid to live by these ideas. 

Bits of truth

“‘Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? … Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.’”

George Orwell, 1984

Orwell’s dystopian vision of a Truthless world of ephemeral narratives was once thought to be possible only in an authoritarian society where every element of counterargument could be “terminated”: figuratively, digitally and, if necessary, Schwarzenegger-style, literally. But we are reaching or have already reached that point in Western democracies due to the convergence of two forces: the idolatry of individualism and the power of the “bit”.

As Rabbi Sacks z”l wrote, “The contemporary West is the most individualistic era of all time. Its central values are in ethics: autonomy; in politics: individual rights; in culture: postmodernism; and in religion: ‘spirituality’. Its idol is the self, its icon the ‘selfie’, and its operating systems the free market and the post-ideological, managerial, liberal democratic state. In place of national identities, we have global cosmopolitanism. In place of communities, we have flash-mobs.” (Not in God’s Name).

And at the same time that the Individual has been enthroned as the ultimate god, truth has been digitised into bits and served up on the altar of “me”.

Digital Truth is the frightening, modern adversary of the ideas above which we Jews introduced into the world.

Digital Truth is absolute – once an algorithm has picked up what I want to see or hear, all I will ever see is my own very small truth, but since I am now god, that truth becomes the Truth, My truth. There will be nothing else allowed to intrude into my myth, and if anything does, why, that is blasphemy, or Blasphemy.

Digital Truth is effortless – instead of needing a lifetime of effort to uncover, striving asymptotically towards Truth, Digital Truth appears with one swipe.

And lastly, Digital Truth is immaculate – it leaves behind no record of the attempts and struggles of others to reach Truth: on the virgin white screen, the words and images appear as fresh as the day they were posted – as if the Truth had always been this way and no other. We lose the wondrous sense of discovery and personal growth; it is all now quite sterile – a virgin birth with the accompanying indignation that it could have ever been anything else.

The True Judge and the Judge of Truth

As we approach the period of Judgement and Truth this year, we have two paths before us: we could lament the loss of the ground we have made over three millennia, to bewail and beweep the fact that so many people seem to have thrown overboard our cherished gift to humanity for the sake of a cheaper, easier, colour, haptic, handheld version (I wonder why?); or we can rededicate ourselves and our children to the path we have walked in glorious, creative tension for three thousand years: channelling the same grit, determination and joy in embracing G-d as the ultimate Judge of everything, the Craftsman of Truth, Whose seal is Truth, and striving to grasp, implement and share some of that Truth in the here and now.

The Truth is, and the truth too, that the latter is our way. We have walked it humbly for these three thousand years, braving the “civilised” world’s antagonism. We have been humble enough to do so without guarantees that we would see impact in our lifetimes; we have been drawn towards and championed the Truth, for its own sake.

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