Speaking Truth to Power…Really?

We hear a lot these days about ‘speaking truth to power,’ i.e. a phrase connoting the necessity for people to stand up for what they believe is right or needed and to tell people who are perceived as being ‘in charge’ what’s what, whether the powers that be want to hear such truth or not. By those who espouse it, ‘speaking truth to power’ is considered an act of heroism, bravery or even self-sacrifice, certainly a quality to be applauded. Of course, not all people of distinction favor ‘speaking truth to power.’ For example, the well known leftist ideologue Noam Chomsky is dismissive of it saying that “power knows the truth already, and is busy concealing it.” To him, the oppressed are the ones who need to hear the truth, not the oppressors.

Be that as it may, the history of ‘speaking truth to power’ goes back to at least ancient Greece. They even had a word for it—parrhesia, to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. It had both a negative and a positive connotation. Famous historical personalities who exemplified this axiom could include the anti-colonialist leader Mahatma Gandhi, German pastor and staunch opponent of the Nazi regime Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Soviet dissident and acclaimed novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., South African political revolutionary Nelson Mandela or even the Pakistani activist for women’s rights, Malala Yousafzai (who became the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate at age 17). We could go on and list many, many more examples of people who lived and gave their lives for being willing to “speak truth to power.” And it is obvious to anyone who honestly looks at history that we may effect change (for better or for worse), in the short term at least, through this tactic. However, that is not our purpose here. Instead, we want to develop this subject in a slightly different direction.

To whom should truth be spoken? To those in power or to those oppressed by that power? As in many areas of life, we may miss the mark if we see the world through a dichotomous lens, i.e. this or that. Could there, in fact, be another category, perhaps even more relevant than either the rulers or the ruled?

Every day, we recite two deeply profound verses back to back in the Uva l’Tzion prayer. The first one is from Tehillim 119:142: צִדְקָתְךָ צֶדֶק לְעוֹלָם וְתוֹרָתְךָ אֱמֶת (Your righteousness is always righteous and your Torah is truth). And the second one is from Michah 7:20: תִּתֵּן אֱמֶת לְיַעֲקֹב חֶסֶד לְאַבְרָהָם אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּעְתָּ לַאֲבֹתֵינוּ מִימֵי קֶדֶם (Give truth to Yaakov, chesed to Avraham, which You swore to our fathers from the days of old). Putting these two ideas together, we are praying that Hashem would continue to give the Torah of truth to the Jewish People, as the descendants of the Patriarchs. This is not a statement of thanksgiving for a historical fact; it is a prayer for a present and constant reality, because without the constant flow of Torah from Heaven, the world would cease to exist.

Most of us are very familiar with the notion that Avraham exemplified chesed, i.e. loving-kindness, a generous and giving spirit, charity to others, etc. But how many of us have it firmly in our consciousness that Yaakov exemplified truth? But truth is not some sort of personalized autograph, self-identity or emotional feeling. It is the Torah and it encompasses all of reality, for with it Hashem created all the worlds, above and below, inner and outer. Truth is highly objective while at the same time being deeply subjective. But how can that be? It seems like a contradiction, but it isn’t. It only appears that way because we may still be locked into a “this or that” way of thinking. Truth must be as subjective as it is objective because it encompasses not only everything external, but also everything internal, everything above and everything below, and that includes all of our levels of consciousness.

But what actually is Torah? What is truth? Truth is the unity of right and left, the consonance of expansion and contraction, the combination of black and white, the blending of silence and sound. On a kabbalistic level, it is the merging of gevurah (self-restraint, Yitchak) with chesed (giving to others, Avraham). Truth is beauty; it is harmony (tiferet). It is a symphony, not a tune. It is a painting, not a stroke of a pen. It is a sonnet, not a couplet. And this is what Hashem gave to Yaakov and to his descendants as an eternal inheritance. And this is what we must embrace. It is both not simple and simple at the same time. Or we could say it another way: it is very complex while not being complex at all. No matter how we want to look at it, truth is not common and is frequently counterintuitive. (A classic example of Yaakov exemplifying truth is that upon his return to Eretz Yisrael when he generously gives gifts [act of chesed] while simultaneously bowing down [act of gevurah] to his wicked brother, Esav.)

That being said, what does this have to do with the topic at hand, ‘speaking truth to power,’ and our question: to whom should truth be spoken? Who is the most important individual to whom we should speak the truth?

Every morning we recite the following prayer: לְעוֹלָם יְהֵא אָדָם יְרֵא שָׁמַיִם בְּסֵתֶר וּבַגָּלוּי וּמוֹדֶה עַל־הָאֱמֶת וְדוֹבֵר אֱמֶת בִּלְבָבוֹ (A man must always fear Heaven privately and out in the open, and acknowledge the truth, and speak the truth in his heart). This is the centrally most important. Let’s relate this to ourselves in order to make it personal: I am the individual to whom I must speak the truth, and the truth must penetrate my own heart. To be honest, brutally honest with myself, with what I think about, with what I look at, with my cravings and desires, with my thoughts about other people, what I fear and worry about, etc.—in a nutshell, with what I am deep down, the bare truth, no-holds-barred truth, and no excuses. And that is a life’s work. And it is simple and not simple both at the same time.

But how do we do this? The fact is that we can’t hear a quiet inner voice when a thousand external voices are raging outside. Therefore, the first step is to turn off the external voices: turn off the television, the radio and the music, close the book, and turn off the lecture…turn them all off. Slow down and listen to the silence. And if you can’t find a quiet place (because your world has become impossibly noisy), then wake yourself up in the middle of the night and go sit in a chair, alone, for ten or fifteen minutes. You may be startled at first, but in time you won’t be able to live through another day without this quiet time. And just talk. Talk to yourself and talk to God. Have a conversation. And if you don’t know what to say, just whisper ‘Thanks.’ In time, ask yourself questions. If you search, you will find yourself and you will begin to fulfill what it means to speak truth in your own heart.

By speaking the truth to ourselves, we cause the most important positive changes in the world—changes in ourselves, to make ourselves better—better husbands, better wives, better sons, better daughters, better employers, better employees, better…you fill in the word that is most relevant to you. Trying to change others by ‘speaking truth to power’ is a waste of effort, a cop out, a distraction of the real work that must be done, which is the work on ourselves. This is the real meaning of Chazal’s teaching in Sanhedrin 37a: כל אחד ואחד חייב לומר בשבילי נברא העולם (Everyone must say, ‘The world was created for my sake’), not to boast about it and not to try to beat other people over the head with one’s version of the truth to satisfy one’s personal or political agendas, etc., but rather to fix oneself, to fill in one’s deficiencies with substance and to take responsibility for oneself instead of assigning blame.