Why does flattery end up trapping the person who flatters?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau explains with a verse from King Solomon: “Gever machlik al re’ehu, reshes pores al pe’amav,” a man who flatters his friend sets a trap beneath his own feet. Why his own feet? “Because flattery is manipulation. You’re not being kind, you’re being fake, and people smell it.”
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that every time the flatterer chooses the lightness of flattery over the weight of truth, he makes himself a light person. His relationships look wide but are full of holes, and people start to say of him, “He’s nice, but don’t ask him what he really thinks.”
That is the trap. Flattery is helium, he says: “You might float in a room, but no one will trust you to carry anything real.”
Related concepts: A true picture, not just true words · Relationships
In A Soul at Peace: The Net of Flattery
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Flattery feels kind but is manipulation, and people sense it.
What may be behind it
In the book Rabbi Landau writes that truth has weight and holds on; flattery is light and has nothing solid in it.
Deepest human truth
The flatterer spreads the net with his own hands, again and again, until he is locked inside it.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Wisdom, Perception, and the Inner Life · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz