Local opinion: Explaining political truths to a seven-year-old

Recently, my 7-year-old son, Mendel, caught a few seconds of a doomsday political ad playing from one of our phones. "Did that really happen?" he wondered, his eyes wide with curiosity and mild alarm.

"No," I replied, trying to navigate a minefield of truth, fiction, and "fake news" on a second-grade level. "It isn't true."

He blinked, baffled. "So ... why did they lie?"

Ah, Mendel — how to explain smear campaigns, twisted truths, and political hyperbole in a single sentence? After all, it makes no sense that a cause or a candidate would hope to earn our trust by lying. And yet, that's how it went down in the 2024 general election.

But Mendel has a point. From a young age, we teach our kids that lying is wrong. And indeed, Scripture has a lot to say about honesty. "He that practices deceit shall not dwell within my house; the speaker of lies shall have no place before my eyes," King David says (Psalms 101:7).

Yet it's interesting to note that there's no straightforward commandment saying, "Thou shalt not lie." We have "Do not murder," "Do not steal," and "Do not take revenge," but lying isn't directly labeled as a "Do Not." (The instruction "You shall not lie, one man to his fellow" (Leviticus 19:11) is specifically about causing a financial loss through lying.)

Instead, the Torah tells us, "Distance yourself from falsehood" (Exodus 23:7).

Jewish sages explain that this choice of wording suggests more than just a prohibition against lying: it's a call to build a life that naturally avoids deceit. Unlike a commandment not to lie, this imperative to distance ourselves from falsehood demands vigilance in many situations — not just in what we say but in what we don't say — what we imply, omit, and "spin." As the Yiddish saying suggests, a half-truth is a whole lie.

This ambiguous instruction also lends itself to mean that there are exceptions even to the honesty rule — times when an untruth can be told — like for peacekeeping purposes or diplomacy, as the Talmud teaches. These, however, are the exception, not the rule.

It's clear that cultivating honesty is considered a core trait, one essential for maintaining trust, integrity, and communal life. In fact, the Talmud compares lying to "warping the tongue" — a kind of ethical mutation with long-term effects.

Let's get back to 2024. Imagine a campaign where candidates promoted their platforms without spin, exaggeration, or strategically vague soundbites. Maybe it's idealistic, but imagine a world where politicians said, "Here's what I hope to accomplish, here's where I messed up before, and here's what I still need to figure out." In other words, imagine a world where candidates distanced themselves from falsehood and relied upon the truth of their opinions, plans, and platforms to promote themselves, allowing an educated electorate to decide for themselves what they prefer.

So why don't they? For some, it might seem impossible to get ahead without stretching the truth. Yet honesty — like humility and patience — is a quality that requires long-term cultivation, whether in our kids, in ourselves, or, maybe one day, even in our politicians. In the meantime, I'll be here, teaching Mendel to tell the truth (and reminding myself to do the same), while he continues to question why anyone would do otherwise.

Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin is the Outreach Director of Chabad Tucson, the Jewish network of Southern Arizona.

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