CA – 1. I realize that in Sara Imeinu’s case, she was not lying, so the two cases are not the same. I was just bringing that as a raaya that you can lie for shalom.
2. Regarding whether or not you can lie about yourself for shalom, I once asked a Rabbi and was told that you can. The person I asked was a Rabbi, someone learned and someone involved in Chinuch. However, he was not a poseik as far as I know. He also was answering on the spot, and my impression was that he was answering out of his own svara and not necessarily because he had seen a source for it.
However, I have never heard that it does not apply to someone lying about themselves and until I hear otherwise, I think it makes sense to assume that it does, and meanwhile I have been relying on what this Rav said. While this Rav may never have seen a source saying that it does apply to oneself, he clearly had never seen one that said it didn’t. If you know of such a source, I would be happy to see it.
3. Regarding the Shevatim, we are always supposed to minimize lying as much as possible even when it is necessary to lie. That doesn’t mean it’s not sheker, just that it is less so. We see this by Yaakov. On the one hand, he responded to Yitzchak in a manner that minimized his lie, but on the other hand, it was still considered a lie.
So on the one hand, the story with the Shevatim does not show that you can’t lie for yourself since you are always supposed to minimize a lie even when it’s not for yourself.
On the other hand, it may actually be an additional proof to my point, since they were “lying” for themselves when all is said and done even though the lie was minimized.
4. Whatever arguments you want to keep bringing about lying for shalom, it’s really a side point. The main point is stated in my above post to Syag.
5. I’m sorry, but I’m not really sure if I should keep posting on this thread, since it just makes the original post more likely to be read by more people. I did feel that it was important to make my points, but I’m not sure that it’s a good idea to continue this ad infinium (I know I probably got that word wrong, but I don’t care even if it invalidates my post since it now contains sheker). If I could continue this discussion off-line, I would be happy to, but it’s not possible. If you don’t believe me that it’s Motzi shem ra, maybe you should check with your LOR or call up the Shmiras Halashon hotline.