An Understanding Heart

Veracity or Virtue? Is honesty always the best policy? Can falsehood ever be a G-dly path? Truth is considered a primary moral virtue in many ethical systems. The Torah places great value on Truth in many places and ways. The Torah also permits significant deviations from truth as a matter of practice. Does this represent a conflict of the pragmatic and the ideal to which we surrender the ideal? Alternatively, perhaps, is there a unified theory extant to resolve these contradictions? “The Seal of the Blessed Holy One is Truth”. This oft-quoted statement is found in several places by Chazal . “Honesty is always the best policy” is a folk truism. Michel Montaigne  (the 17th century French essayist) writes in his Essays “That as the only thing that bonds people together is words falsehood strikes at the heart of any connection among Humans”. The Ohr Hachayim, in his first piece of commentary on Beraishit, points out that the account of creation allows several fundamental error