Rabbi Dr. Mark S. Kinzer, Fr. Jean-Miquel Garrigues, O.P., and Professor Gary Anderson will be speaking at the Hillsdale College Gershom Lecture Series on the topic of Beyond Vatican II: The Catholic Church and Judaism in the Twenty-First Century. The talks will center around Rabbi Kinzer's new book, "Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church." The lectures are free and open to the public. More information about Rabbi Kinzer's book can be found at http://www.markkinzer.com.
Our parashah today discusses many topics of justice, of jurisprudence and of social ethics. Today I would like to expand upon a topic that is only mentioned briefly but which holds considerable weight. Before I do so, I need to take you back to last week. Do you remember in my drash from last week the law about having to kill all life and completely obliterate a city that is proven to be idolatrous? What I didn’t mention then is that there are some laws we’ve derived from Torah that are interpreted extremely narrowly, or even not enforced at all but rather treated as educational. The destruction of all living things in an idolatrous city is one of those laws. Our sages determined that
