The Town of Kushta Where No One Ever Told a Lie

Midrash Aggadah Sanhedrin 97a

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 13, 2025

Ravina once sighed, "There is no truth left in the world." Rabbi Toviah would not let the statement stand. "If all the riches of the world were offered me," he would say, "I would not tell a falsehood." And to prove he meant it, he told a story.

I once traveled, Toviah said, to a place called Kushta — which in Aramaic simply means truth. In that town no one ever swerved from the truth, and as a reward the townspeople did not die before old age. I married there. I settled there. I had two sons.

One day my wife was sitting and combing her hair when a neighbor came to the door. It would have been indelicate, I thought, for a stranger to see her at her toilet. So I went to the door and said, "She is not at home."

A small lie. A polite one. The kind every city in the world tells a hundred times before breakfast.

Within days my two sons were dead. The people of Kushta came to me, not in anger but in grief, and asked what I had done. When I confessed, they said gently, "You must leave. One untruth is enough to break the covenant of this place." (Sanhedrin 97a)

The rabbis told this story to remind themselves that a lie is never small. In a town where truth is the air, one false breath is enough to end a child's life.

Themes

Ethics Speech Parables Rabbis

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