An eye for an eye?

(JNS) — I once heard a story about two Jews back in Russia who got into a terrible argument. Their blood pressure was rising fast. One fellow got so incensed that he shouted, “I am so angry at what you’ve done to me that I… uh… I uh… I know: I won’t go to your funeral!”

Whereupon the other guy very calmly replied: “I don’t take revenge. I will go to your funeral.”

While other cultures sanction and may even encourage revenge, in Judaism revenge is explicitly forbidden (Leviticus 19:18).

Some Muslim countries still practice amputation as a punishment for stealing. It seems anathema to the modern...