In this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, Jacob fights with the angel of Esau in a prefiguring of future struggles between the Jews and their enemies. Esau is the grandfather of Amalek, the source of all antisemitism. Antisemitism is fueled not only by hatred of Jews but by the erasure of truth, enabling millennia-old falsehoods and conspiracy theories.  

Our time of growing antisemitism is thus necessarily accompanied by the privation of truth. High school students with TikTok accounts have become the measure of what is and what is not. Artificial intelligence has made pictures—which used to be worth 1,000 words—worthless. Truth, one of the great values Judaism brought to the Western world, has been replaced by lies, enabling antisemitism, which needs this spirit of falsehood to thrive.   

What are we to do? 

A strange Midrash, I think, can offer some instruction (Bereshit Rabbah 8:5):

“Rabbi Simon said: When the Holy One came to create Adam, the ministering angels divided into various factions…Kindness said: ‘Let the human be created, as he will perform acts of kindness.’ Truth said: ‘Let the human not be created, as he will be full of lies.’ Righteousness said: ‘Let the human be created, as he will perform acts of righteousness.’ Peace said: ‘Let the human not be created, as he will be all discord.’ What did the Holy One blessed be He do? He took Truth and cast it down to earth. That is what is written: ‘You cast truth earthward’ (Daniel 8:12). The ministering angels said before the Holy One blessed be He: ‘Master of the universe, why are You demeaning Your very emblem (Truth)?’ (God replied:) That is what is written: ‘Truth will spring from the earth’ (Psalms 85:12).”

In the Midrash, God does not seem bothered by the problem of peace; God is willing to create the human being without addressing the human tendency for strife. But this is not the case with truth. The human can exist without peace, but for truth there must be some solution; the human cannot live without truth and also cannot be created along with it (since the human is filled with falsehood). 

God comes up with a creative solution. God does not retain truth in an immediate sense because humans by nature are not truthful and He wishes to create them. But God cannot dispose of truth either—truth is a necessary prerequisite for creation. So God throws it to the ground and plants it.  

I think the Midrash is telling us that truth cannot just be instilled in our world or in human beings. It must be cultivated like a crop. This takes a great deal of work, akin to what God tells Adam when He exiles him from the Garden of Eden, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread.” Agriculture is very hard work. This is the metaphor for truth. To cultivate truth takes ongoing work, faith, hope, the right conditions, and the sweat of our brow. At times, thorns and thistles will come up in its stead, but cultivate truth we must, for the human being cannot exist without it.