108was a Sanhedrin— a supreme religious council that
hasn’t existed since the time of the Romans.
“Okay,” I said, “so what happens when the Mes-
siah comes back, as you surely expect he will, and
you reconvene the Sanhedrin? Then what?”
Here I glimpsed the rueful smile of the cornered
theocrat. “Well, that’s a very interest ing question,”
he said—to which he had no interest ing or even
sane answer. He simply conceded that if the Mes-
siah came back and reconvened the Sanhedrin,
well, then, yes— though mere mortals like ourselves
might not see the wisdom of it— homosexuals, adul-
teresses, witches, and Sabbath breakers would be
killed, and every other barbaric prescription found
in the Old Testament would apply.
As I was contemplating where on his person I
should aim my vomit, he managed this fi nal de-
fense of his religion: “You just don’t understand
what an obscenity— what a sacrilege— these things
would represent in the presence of the Messiah and
in the view of a properly consecrated Sanhedrin.”
Indeed, I don’t.
Encounters of this kind make me want to know
exactly what is behind carefully worded statements.
And my fear is that when you have a fatwa like the
one we circulated, pegged to covenants and trea-
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