the rabbi's response is one, sadly, that we are going to get a lot of.

It took me two days to reply to this thread because I was wondering how this conversation would have gone with a Catholic priest... I recently found out that a priest whom I had asked several questions 20 years ago was defrocked for "questionable behaviour" and died a few years ago. However, I heard that he had actually fallen victim to the inner struggle of understanding what Scripture says against what he had to do as ordered by the Vatican. Such torment that drives a person to self-destruction! Truly, I pray for the day when lies and deception no longer have a hold of any of us. Knowing that we only have a short time left is a poignant statement that nothing changes until the very end, and is a sad commentary on knowing good and evil by ourselves. I can't imagine if no humans even had the voice of conscience... what we would have done to each other and to the world.