The Complexities of Truth
Like many children, I was taught the importance of telling the truth. I learned this as a general rule, “you should always tell the truth,” but there were certain people for whom truthfulness was especially important: my parents, friends, teachers, and doctors and medical professionals. As easy as it was to accept this when I was young, I started to struggle with this moral imperative as I got older, while navigating the world with a disabled body and mind. I care very much about truth and accuracy, yet I found myself constantly reframing my experiences to make them legible and believable to others. This has often meant downplaying my struggles to avoid being seen as dramatic or exaggerating, or carefully calibrating my words to align with what I thought others expected to hear. Over time, these balancing attempts made the simple act of truth-telling feel fraught with complexity and risk.
Like many adults, the distance between the blacks and whites of truths and lies narrowed to gray with time. For me, however, I’ve found that even simple questions, those that many of us answer with simple lies or half-truths, can become significant moments of wrestling. The question of “how are you?” takes on different significance when it’s asked by a doctor vs. a manager, for example, because I need my doctor to understand the extent to which my disabilities impact my life, but when I’m working I want my manager to understand the extent to which I’m effectively navigating that impact. Sometimes the answer to this question is about making other people comfortable, sometimes it’s about advocating for my quality of life, and sometimes it’s about relieving a shouldered burden.
Exploring parashat Shemot through the lens of Disability Torah has helped me better understand my lived experiences, and allowed me the opportunity to better relate with and to Torah. Disability Torah is one interpretive approach that centers disabled perspectives and experiences in the study of Torah. It can look like engaging with explicit disability found in the text, like Isaac’s blindness, or it can be a way of using the text as a jumping off point to explore lived experiences of disability (and many things between and beyond). While reading Shemot, I found myself grappling with the idea of truthfulness, particularly as it relates to my own experiences of navigating disability, specifically within systems that are not always designed with me in mind, and how something that might seem like a straightforward concept can have immense complexity, beyond the norms of everyday small lies that occur in the interest of being polite or keeping the peace.
Parashat Shemot sees the children of Jacob expand in the Land of Egypt, growing into a mighty people. Pharaoh sees this increase and fearfully tries to dominate the Hebrews through intense physical labor, and then through order of the murder of all their baby boys. The midwives defy Pharaoh’s command, so Pharaoh orders all baby boys to be drowned in the Nile river. Moses survives through the care of his mother, and the kindness of Pharaoh’s daughter, and grows into a man. He wrestles with his identity, kills an Egyptian, and flees to the land of Midian to escape death once again. It’s in Midan, while working as a shepherd, that Moses encounters the Divine, and is called to lead his people out of Egypt.
Before Moses’s birth, Torah introduces two women, Shiphrah and Puah, Hebrew midwives, who defy Pharaoh’s decree to kill all newborn Hebrew boys. When Pharaoh demands an explanation, they respond in Exodus 1:19 by saying that it is “because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” Shiphrah and Puah outright lie to Pharaoh, and the text says that because of this “God dealt well” with them. The 18th century sage and scholar Or HaChaim says that the midwives were rewarded for their disobedience, and were given additional resources to perform their work because of their dishonesty to Pharaoh. Their actions highlight the moral complexity of truthfulness. In an unjust and oppressive system, where strict adherence to truth would perpetuate harm, the midwives prioritize justice and compassion over rigid honesty, and their behavior is not only permissible, but rewarded.
Subterfuge, a form of strategic dishonesty, is explored in the Women’s Torah Commentary when thinking about these gray areas. The commentary notes, “subterfuge is what [people] in positions of powerlessness, or of limited power, use to meet their rightful needs. [...] In Biblical narratives, their acts are usually recognized as beneficial.” As biblical scholar Susan Niditch notes, “Deeply wise in fundamental, life-sustaining ways, these women understand instinctively that Pharaoh should be disobeyed; and, with initiative, they act on this knowledge.” Shiphrah and Puah embody the power of moral resistance through misrepresentation of narrative. Their response is not merely about avoiding harm, instead it is about asserting a deeper truth in the value of life, even when expressed through a lack of truth.
The midwives’ resistance resonates deeply with my experiences of navigating medical systems as a disabled person. These systems, shaped by ableism, bureaucracy, and mistrust, frequently demand proof of a need for care or accommodations, through extensive documentation and invasive questioning, with formulaic standards to be met. Standards most often devised by those who are abled. Medical systems that are shaped in this way, often fail to accommodate the diversity of human experience. These systems demand that people fit their lived realities into rigid frameworks to access care or accommodations. In these contexts, truth-telling can become an anxiety-producing wrestling match. This dynamic forces many to frame experiences in ways that align with institutional expectations, even when doing so requires misrepresentation or strategic omission. Experiences may also be reframed to match the expectations of medical professionals, knowing that deviation from these norms can lead to disbelief or inadequate care.
For example, someone with chronic pain might understate the impact of their pain to avoid being labeled as overly reliant on care or as exaggerating. Alternatively, they might adjust the language they use to describe their pain, translating their experiences into terms they believe are more likely to be understood or validated by medical providers. These choices are not about overt manipulation, as can be a not too infrequent accusation of the disability community, within and outside the medical system, but about navigating systems that often fail to trust or respect our experiences. These accusations of manipulation ignore the reality that disabled people are often forced to tailor our narratives simply to be believed, a necessity that comes out of systemic bias rather than deceit. All of this highlights the complexity that exists when discussing truth-telling, particularly within complex systems that aren’t always able to account for the diversity of lived experiences.
In mid-December 2024 I sat in the office of my pain doctor. It had taken several months to get in to see him, and it would be many more months before I saw him again. My pain was sitting around 4 or 5, due in large part because I had spent the past week in bed, after a period of heavy activity. Ten days prior, my pain averaged a 7, spiking to an 8 or 9 with shocking nerve pain down my hip and leg if I moved a certain way. I agonize about reporting pain, I value being accurate and precise. I also know that if I reported a 4 that day, I risked not receiving enough pain medication to last through Pesach in April. My mind went back to the seder I led at my internship earlier last spring, and how much pain I was in from setting up for it, despite help from my colleagues and students. I had to cancel second night plans because of how much pain I was in following the first night, and that was with plenty of medication. The questions on my mind weren’t as simple as the question that would soon be posed to me, “on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your pain?” It was so much more complicated. Am I lying if I report a number that is true sometimes, even if it’s not true at that moment? What if I know it’ll be true between now and when I see the doctor again? Is it wrong to aggregate my pain score from the last appointment to now, and report that number instead?
For disabled people, reframing experiences or strategically omitting details is not about lying, but survival. Just as Shiphrah and Puah used creative strategies to subvert Pharaoh’s cruelty, we too learn to navigate systems that fail to trust or respect our lived realities. Like the midwives, disabled people in these situations are responding to systems that disregard us, using creative strategies to prioritize our own wellness and ensure we receive the care we need. As we move forward from this moment, may we think of our parsha and remember that things are not always as black and white as they may seem. What might seem like a simple ethical value of truthfulness, comes with much nuance and cannot be universally applied the same way in every situation. May we be blessed with the strength to lean into complexity, and give ourselves compassion when our choices feel out of line with dominant narratives we may have been taught. May we remember the courageous choice that Shiphrah and Puah made, and be empowered to make our own. And may we find reward in the difficult moments that, ultimately, allow us to live.
Mat Wilson (they/them) enjoys board and video games, road trips big and small, and any opportunity to be in water. They discovered a love for Torah study through the art of source sheet creation, and are now using writing as a way to explore their lived experiences with disability. Outside of their free time, Mat is a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and is pursuing a Master’s in Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.
