This week’s Sunday NY Times “Ethicist” column was a fascinating reflection about honesty and deception. The questioner was a man who years ago had an adulterous affair with a neighbor, and he writes that he is the biological father of her child. Neither the child’s presumptive father – that is, the woman’s husband – nor the girl herself has any knowledge of this. Does the girl have a right to know her true parentage upon adulthood? Even earlier? Does he have the right to throw his neighbor’s marriage into havoc with this revelation?
The “Ethicist,” Ariel Kaminer, did a good job of addressing the question in consequentialist terms: that is, what would be the practical outcome of such a revelation? She denied that telling the truth as a general duty could trump the actual effects of such a revelation on everyone’s lives. The best argument for revealing the truth would be consequentialist, she said: the girl would need to know her true family medical history. Similarly, Kaminer wrote the strongest argument for keeping up the falsehood would be that revealing this information could destroy what may otherwise be a happy family. Kaminer wisely urged the man to scrutinize his own motives: was he considering coming clean to serve the girl’s right to know the truth, or his own emotional need to tell it.
There are no easy answers to this multi-faceted question. In the end, I agree with Kaminer’s general inclination that it would be best for the man not to reveal the girl’s paternity, even though it certainly would be deceptive for him to do so. In this case, maintaining a lie of omission is probably the way to go.
(By the way, how rare are such “non-paternity” cases? A well-known urban scientific legend has it that up 10 percent of children are not the biological children of their apparent fathers. According to that unimpeachable source Wikipedia (although the footnotes look good here) that number is too high. But the true number is not negligible. One reported median number for “non-paternity events” among scientific studies was 3.7 percent. Even if the number falls to 1 or 2 percent, that’s still a lot of dark secrets to keep.)
A few thoughts on this theme in Judaic terms. First, on the apparent fact of this man’s paternity of the girl, based on the mother’s word. Well … how sure can you be about this? How does the mother even know for certain? Unless she had no intercourse with her own husband for, let’s say, a full menstrual cycle on either side of the cycle in which the apparent conception occurred, it is certainly possible that the husband is actually the biological father. And if this were the facts of the case, then her husband has probably figured out his own non-paternity on his own.
In fact, even if the mother is pretty sure her lover were the father, Jewish law would presume the husband to be the biological father in any case: “Rabbi Tahlifa of the West taught in the presence of Rabbi Abahu: The children of a known adulteress are presumed to be legitimate, for most acts of intercourse were with the husband [B. Talmud Sotah 27a].” This law is codified (with slight nuance) in Shulhan Arukh Even HaEzer 4.15. Even if the husband were out of town from his wife for up to 12 months before the birth of the child, he remains the presumptive biological father, according to Jewish law.
Now all this might be dismissed in our day as the product of scientific ignorance, now resolvable by DNA testing. But the woman in the Ethicist anecdote is apparently unwilling to perform such a test on her daughter.
But more to the point, I think the Talmudic and Halakhic motivation is ethical, not merely an outgrowth of weak ability to verify genetic data. A similar case (without reference to paternity) is discussed in responsa literature. Although there are some estimable figures who disagree (esp. Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, the “Noda BiYehuda”), a powerful argument is made by Rabbi Hayim Halberstam (d. 1876), of Sanz, that one should not reveal to a man that his wife has cheated on him. In the case before Rabbi Hayim (Responsa Divrei Hayim, OH 1.35), the former paramour wanted to repent. But in view of the public shame that such a revelation would cost the husband, the wife and the lover and all their families, Rabbi Hayim ruled that he should continue the deception through his lies of omission, rather than ruin all their lives for the sake of unburdening his conscience.
There is something tragic about all this. We might hope that people could rectify evil actions with noble ones. But in this case, the path forward holds no possibility of repairing the sin, only the chance not to exacerbate it. And even that possibility can only be attained, not through good actions, but by the fundamentally wrong act of maintaining a lie. The subject of that story in the Divrei Hayim and in the Ethicist had each done something terrible. But living with their guilt is part of the moral burden they now must carry to avoid further hurting everyone involved. All this ends up being quite close to Kaminer’s argument in the Ethicist.
Can this be squared with the Torah’s multiple prohibitions on lying? (eg Exodus 23.7: “Keep far from falsehood.”) Kant regards such a duty as a categorical imperative, applicable at all times, in all circumstances. Judaically, I think, the consequentialist argument carries real weight, as Rabbi Hayim’s argument shows. You have to ask yourself whether “letting the law pierce the mountain” will actually benefit the world around you? Or will it only ease your conscience, but cause worse pain to those already victimized?
In an admittedly less weighty case, the Talmud (B. Ketubot 17a) gives us a good rule of thumb. Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai debate the problem of white lies. Should one compliment an ugly bride (Hillel) or should one tell the truth, however the poor girl may feel afterward (Shammai)?
The Talmud endorses Hillel’s kindly view, no surprise, and gives us a great empathetic rule of thumb: “A person’s mind should always be bound up with other people’s feelings.”
Honesty is necessary. But brutal honesty? That’s brutal.
- Nedarim, Daf 79 - January 12, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 78 - January 11, 2023
- Nedarim, Daf 77 - January 10, 2023