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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