What is the difference between lying and performing?

Rabbi Landau explains the difference in one line: “Liars, they know the truth. Performers, forget it.” A liar still has the truth in his hands and chooses to hide it. A performer has played the part so long that he no longer remembers there is anything underneath.

That is why he sees performing as the deeper danger. Most people who fail, he says, are not lying; they have “built an entire life defending a fiction.” And because the performed version is often impressive, competent, even admirable, nobody questions it, including the performer himself.

The result, in his words, is “the greatest human tragedy”: “a person who dies never having met himself.” The way back is the truth King David describes, speaking truth in one's own heart, so that you stop fooling the hardest person to fool: yourself.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Liars know the truth; performers have forgotten it.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the liar's connection to the truth was never cut, only covered over, while the actor built a character and little by little forgot that he built it.

Deepest human truth

The greatest tragedy is dying without having met yourself. Truth must first be spoken in the heart.

More questions from this teaching

• How can I tell whether I'm living as my real self or just performing?