8 | JUNE 29 • 2023 

opinion
Should the Pittsburgh Shul Murderer Hang?
I

n a decidedly unsurprising 
verdict, the man who mur-
dered 11 Jews in the 2018 
Tree of Life synagogue massacre 
in Pittsburgh has been found 
guilty. Now, Robert 
Bowers faces a 
second judgment: 
The court must 
determine whether 
he will receive the 
death penalty.
Three congre-
gations were using 
the Tree of Life facility at the 
time of the massacre — New 
Light, Dor Hadash and Tree of 
Life itself. According to the New 
York Times, “There has not been 
agreement among the three con-
gregations or within them about 
whether Mr. Bowers should be 
sentenced to death.
”
This is also unsurprising. The 
American Jewish community 
is overwhelmingly liberal and 
progressive. As a result, it has 
long been deeply uncomfort-
able with the death penalty. No 
doubt many of them wish to see 
Bowers pay the ultimate price, 
but there are likely many others 
— perhaps a majority — who 
believe this would only com-
pound his atrocity. It is probable 
that they believe Bowers’ execu-
tion would violate the principles 
of Judaism itself or at least their 
understanding of them.
It is not true, of course, that 
Judaism has traditionally reject-
ed the death penalty. The Torah 
prescribes it for all manner of 
transgressions, and while the 
Sages and their successors cir-
cumscribed its practice, they 
never rejected it wholesale. It was 
carefully regulated but remained 
part of the law and thus consid-
ered to be moral and applicable 
in certain cases, however rare 

they might be.
For many modern Jews, 
however, this is not enough. In 
America, and particularly among 
liberal and progressive Jews, the 
traditional Jewish view of the 
death penalty has been caught 
up in the maelstrom of the larger 
debate in society over capital 
punishment and its possible 
abolition.
Often, abolitionists’ concerns 
are practical ones. They hold 
that capital punishment is inef-
fective as a deterrent, overused, 
racially biased in its application 
and impossible to carry out in 
anything resembling a humane 
fashion.
The details conceal the essen-
tial issue, which is a moral one. 
That is, the abolitionists believe 
that capital punishment is sim-
ply wrong. Killing, they hold, is 
universally considered to be an 
evil, and this holds true whether 
it is done by an individual or in 
the name of the state. For the 
state to kill, moreover, is not only 
hypocrisy but a travesty, because 
it seeks to punish a crime by 
committing a crime.
Ultimately, the abolitionists 

ask a basic moral question: Does 
the state have the right to kill? 
Their unequivocal answer is 
“no.
”
I sympathize with this position 
to some degree. At the very least, 
it is morally consistent. For me, 
however, it is not enough.
I will have to preface my 
explanation with the often 
unfortunate phrase “as a Jew.
” I 
must do so because I think that, 
for a Jew, the morality of capital 
punishment can only be ascer-
tained by asking a very different 
question.
As a Jew, I believe that ques-
tion is not, “Does the state have 
the right to kill?” It is: Should 
Eichmann have been hanged?
I do not intend to delve into 
the details of the trial of Adolf 
Eichmann or the specifics of his 
colossal crimes. I merely note 
that Eichmann and his execution 
present a Jew with a dilemma 
that, I believe, admits of only one 
answer.
We must ask ourselves: If we 
take the abolitionists at their 
word, that they really believe it is 
not simply wrong for the state to 
kill but actually evil, then do we 

believe — really believe — that 
the execution of the architect of 
the Holocaust was actually evil?
This is not a question to be 
taken lightly. To kill a man, for 
any reason, is a horrible thing. 
Indeed, I have read that the 
guard who cut Eichmann’s body 
down was traumatized for life by 
the sight of the corpse’s distorted 
features. Even the devil’s execu-
tion raises the most profound 
questions of morality and justice.
Nonetheless, I know what 
my instinctive reaction to the 
question is. Like the abolitionists, 
I must obey it and the moral 
imperative it constitutes. It is a 
simple, quiet but unequivocal no. 
No force on earth or heaven 
could ever convince me that it 
was evil for Adolf Eichmann to 
die at the end of a rope or that a 
state — especially a Jewish state 
— had no right to execute him.
If I accept this, then I must 
accept everything that comes 
with it: The death penalty may 
be overapplied, discriminatory 
and ineffective as a deterrent, 
but it is not inherently wrong. 
Perhaps it should be used more 
sparingly and applied only in the 
most extreme cases, but it is not 
an unmitigated evil.
The abolitionists have every 
right to go on believing that 
capital punishment is an abomi-
nation. I respect their principles, 
but I do not accept them. If I 
know anything, I know this: 
Eichmann should have been 
hanged. If a Pittsburgh court 
makes the same determination 
in regards to Robert Bowers, 
then in good conscience, I will 
have no choice but to say: So be 
it, let him hang, too. 

Benjamin Kerstein is a writer and editor 

living in Tel Aviv. 

Benjamin 
Kerstein
JNS.org

A makeshift shrine to the victims of the mass shooting at Tree of Life 
Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

BRENDT A. PETERSEN VIA JNS.ORG

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