GEN1605 [This and next verse] make [] it as plain possible that the story they told Joseph was a lie. If Jacob had really said those words he would have said them to Joseph himself, not to the brothers. The times to have done so was on his deathbed in the previous chapter. The brothers’ tale … was a “white lie.” Its primary aim was not to deceive but to ease a potentially explosive situation.  Perhaps that is why Joseph wept, understanding that his brothers still thought him capable of revenge. The sages derived a principle from this text. Mutar leshanot mipnei hashalom, “It is permitted to tell an untruth (literally, “to change” the facts) for the sake of peace” Yevamot 65b.   A white lie is permitted in Jewish law…. It is clear that the sages needed both [Genesis 18:12 – 13 and this] episodes to establish the principle.  Had we known only about the case of Sarah, we could not infer that we are permitted to tell a white lie. God did not tell a white lie about Sarah. He merely did not tell Abraham the whole truth. Had we only known about the case of Joseph’s brothers, we could not have inferred that what they did was permitted. Perhaps it was forbidden, and that is why Joseph wept. The fact that God Himself had done something similar is what led the sages to say that the brothers were justified. What is at stake here is an important feature of the moral life, despite the fact that we seem to be speaking of no more than social niceties: tact. The late Sir Isaac Berlin pointed out that not all values coexist in any kind of platonic harmony. His favourite example is freedom and equality. You can have a free economy but the result will be inequality. You can have economic equality-communism-but the result will be a loss of freedom. In the world as currently configured, moral conflict is unavoidable. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). This was an important fact, though one about which Judaism seems never to of been in doubt. ...  The existence of conflicting values means that the kind of morality we adopt and society we create depend not only on the values we embrace but also on the way we prioritize them. Prioritizing equality over freedom creates one kind of society-Soviet Communism for example. Prioritizing freedom over equality leads to market economics. People in both societies may value the same things but they rank them differently in the scale of values, and thus prioritize how they choose when the two conflict. This is what is at stake in the stories of Sarah and Joseph’s brothers. Truth and peace are both values, but which do we choose when they conflict? … Given the choice, when it came to interpersonal relations, the sages valued peace over truth, not least because truth can flourish in peace while it is often the first casualty in war. So the brothers were not wrong to tell Joseph a white lie for the sake of peace within the family. It reminded them all of the deeper truth that not only their human father, now dead, but also their heavenly Father, eternally alive, wants the people of the covenant to be at peace. For how can Jews be at peace with the world if they are not at peace with themselves? SACKS 72-76