The answer is twofold: avoid falsehood as much as possible—and, in rare situations, use it for holy purposes. Sometimes it’s permitted to lie for the sake of peace.

Another way of using falsehood for holy purposes is to “trick” the yetzer hara, our evil inclination.
The yetzer hara always pushes us toward immediate gratification, while whispering that our mitzvot can wait. But if we are clever, we can turn that impulse on its head by delaying the yetzer and doing mitzvot immediately when they come our way.

When we lived in Cape Town, we had a Rabbi’s Kollel—a wonderful group of rabbis who met for a couple of hours each morning to learn........

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