Devar Torah – Va’etchanan July 20, 2013 Cantor Penny Kessler I’m not going to teach about George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. Not about the wrongheaded “Stand Your Ground” gun laws that created the environment for this tragedy. Not about the trial. Not about the jury’s decision except to say that given the many imperfections of the American jury system, we have to assume that they based their deliberations on the facts presented as evidence and came to what they believed to be the only legal conclusion available. Not about a teen’s swaggering bravado, typical for young men of his age, that innocently exacerbated a bad situation. I won’t teach about what would have happened had that teen chose to stand his own ground and wound up killing the older man. And I won’t teach about the racial implications of someone’s following a suspect based only on the color of his skin or about a man who went out, armed with a deadly weapon, spoiling for a fight instead of obeyin
Because cantors talk, too.