Board of rabbis condemns death penalty

"Thou shalt not kill" is a pretty straightforward concept.

That's what the Board of Rabbis of Northern California was thinking on Monday, Dec. 8, when it overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the abolition of the death penalty in America.

"The Bible itself, of course, endorses the death penalty. But the [talmudic-era ] rabbis were very uncomfortable with it, and, as in our resolution, they found it repugnant. Personally, for me, it's a matter of the sanctity of human life. If we want the standard of holding a life completely sacred, the state shouldn't be setting the example of taking a life," said Rabbi Bernie Robinson of San Rafael, who introduced the resolution to the board.

Robinson's resolution passed, 41-6, with one abstention.

"Endorsing an abolition gets the rabbis on the record and at least lends some weight to the point of view that our country is on the wrong track here."

Noting a historical Jewish abhorrence to capital punishment, Rabbi H. David Teitelbaum, the board's executive director, said that the talmudic rabbis "practically legislated the death penalty out of existence.

"They required, first of all, that there had to be two eyewitnesses and the person who committed the crime had to have a warning ahead of time. The rabbis said a court which sentences someone to death once every 70 years is a murderous court."

Robinson, a retired state chaplain at institutions for the mentally disabled or ill, modeled his resolution after statements issued by the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly.

Last year, he helped convince both the rabbinical board and Marin County's board of supervisors to pass resolutions calling for a death penalty moratorium.

While based in Jewish tradition, not all of the rabbis' objections to capital punishment stemmed from historical attitudes.

"In Illinois, the governor instituted a moratorium on the death penalty after a number of people were found to be innocent after being condemned to death," Teitelbaum said.

"Who knows how many innocent people have already been put to death?"

According to the group Death Penalty Focus, 111 men and women nationwide have been released from death row in the last 20 years after being exonerated. There are currently more than 620 inmates on California's death row.

Rabbi Sheldon Lewis, the board's president, called the resolution an "easy sell" even among a group of rabbis featuring a "diversity of views."

"I hope, No. 1, we raise the consciousness of people in our own community and, No. 2, that our resolution becomes part of a tide of those who think similarly across the nation," said Lewis, the senior rabbi at Palo Alto's Conservative Congregation Kol Emeth.

It's hoped, he said, that the board will be one group of many "taking a new look at how we punish those who commit terrible crimes."