On This Week's Death Penalty

Dear friends, 

After Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death in 1962, several prominent Jewish intellectuals and artists wrote to President Ben Zvi a letter urging him to commute the sentence. Executing him, they argued, would be the not Jewish thing to do, and would put the country on a path of violence and retribution. Ben Gurion convened the cabinet to debate the matter. They decided against it, recommended to the president that the petition be denied, and hours later Eichmann was hanged. I thought of these events this week after the jury's recommendation for the death penalty was announced in the trial of Robert Bowers, who committed the mass murder at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

The cases are different, of course. But they are similar in attitudes toward capital punishment. The Knesset made an exception to the law in order to be able to execute Eichmann. Similarly, most American Jews oppose the death penalty on principal, but many are in favor of the death penalty in this case. 

The families of the victims are split on the matter. And so, it seems are American Jews in general. Some see the verdict as an important statement against antisemitism at a moment in which it is on the rise. Others experience it as a moral test that we are failing: can we live up to our values even when we are under attack? 

In June, Conrad spoke to these questions at his Bar Mitzvah. Looking at both the Torah and our society today, he asked: what is the purpose of punishment? "Shouldn’t we be asking how punishment can change people for the better," he challenged. When he spoke to this incident that followed the Eichmann trial, it was as an example of a case in which punishment cannot change the perpetrator. "When people cannot change, a different attitude is needed." This different attitude has to do with the other people involved: the victims' families, the synagogue community, the Jewish community and society at large.

It's hard to know what people need. But as a society I tend to think that we need less violence, so I felt sad when I read the verdict. Our ancestors in the Talmud expressed it like this:

"A Sanhedrin that executed [more than] one person in a week is called a “murderous” [court]. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya states: “[More than] one person in 70 years [would be denoted a murderous court].” Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva state: “If we had been members of the Sanhedrin, no defendant would ever have been executed.”

Ultimately, I land somewhere between Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarya and team Rabbi Tarfon/Rabbi Akiva. There was a type of healing that the nation needed in 1962 when EIchmann's ashes were scattered into the Mediterranean. The world is better without him, like it would be better without Robert Bowers. On the other hand, Israel's path of violence that emerged since 62' is impossible to ignore. Perhaps that was the fatal moment in which the scales tilted. Perhaps the test was failed. Perhaps deciding whether another person lives or dies is an act of hubris that goes beyond considerations of benefit and loss, which should remain between a person and their God no matter how horrific their deeds.

I pray for the healing of the victims' families and friends, for the three congregations who lost dear members that day, for the demise of hate in this country, for the rise of softness and the fall of violence. Let us continue the final act of those who lost their lives that day: the act of coming together for prayer.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha