Eva Fleischner found that almost without exception, her Christian students “come out in favor of forgiveness, while the Jewish students feel that Simon did the right thing by not granting the dying man’s wish” (p. 139). Do you feel that the Christian and Jewish writers in this volume are similarly divided? Do their differences stem from first-hand experience, or from different notions of sin and repentance, as Dennis Prager suggests? Do any writers in this book seriously suggest forgiveness? Why? Do you believe, with political theorist Herbert Marcuse, that “the easy forgiving of such crimes perpetuates the very evil it wants to alleviate” (p. 198)?
