Photo by Duskis Photo
Rabbi Isaac Leizerowski
he told the church audience.

But it was not a fundamental state-
ment of Jewish law, according to a
couple of local Orthodox rabbis. Rabbi
Isaac Leizerowski of Congregation
Beth Midrash HaRav B’Nai Jacob in
Philadelphia and Rabbi Yonah Gross
of Congregation Beth Hamedrosh
in Wynnewood both argued that the
Torah supports the death penalty.

Leizerowski explained that, in the
Torah, the death penalty is not a punish-
ment for a sin. It is “an atonement on the
soul of the sinner.” Citing Rabbi Moshe
Feinstein, a foremost scholar of Jewish
law in the 20th century, Gross said that
capital punishment helps us recognize
“how stringent the prohibition is” on
killing someone. The death penalty is
just, according to Gross. But to impose
it is “an indictment of the generation
in some ways more than the perpetra-
tor,” he said. The generation was “not
strong enough in setting up the guard-
rails that would keep anybody from
violating that prohibition.”
“It’s the sign of a civilization in decay,”
he said.

Capital punishment was perhaps
never more justifi ed than in the case
of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter
in 2018. Even Shapiro, then the state’s
attorney general, believed so at the
time, he said in his Feb. 16 speech. As
the governor put it, the shooter killed
11 praying Jews at the Tree of Life
synagogue complex, the deadliest act
of antisemitism in American history.

Yet it was the family members of those
victims who convinced Shapiro that
the killer did not deserve the death
penalty. “That moved me,” the governor said,
although many family members have
since said that they support the death
penalty. But in that case, it probably would
have been a just punishment. As Jews,
Gross explained, we assume that “the
Torah is eternal.” Therefore, if you
have to indict the generation by using
capital punishment, you do. He said
he is uncomfortable with removing it
entirely. But while it may have been just
under Jewish law to put the Pittsburgh
shooter to death, that is not always the
case. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article
applauding the governor’s decision
mentioned that 10 Pennsylvania
death row prisoners and 185 death
row prisoners nationwide have been
exonerated since 1973. If even one
of them had faced the death penalty,
it would have been a moral failing
beyond that of letting a killer stay alive,
according to Leizerowski, citing the
great Jewish philosopher Maimonides.

“Better that 1,000 murderers be set
free than one innocent man be put
to death. And that is our approach to
this,” the rabbi said. “Only with the
greatest judicious eye would we use
the death penalty.”
“The system is fallible, and the
outcome is irreversible,” Shapiro said
during his speech.

It is also not the job of a politician to
consider capital punishment from the
perspective of Jewish law, according
to Leizerowski. The United States is a
secular society that does not view the
death penalty as a matter of redeem-
ing the soul, he explained. Therefore, it
is only Shapiro’s job to think of it from a
practical perspective.

“When Josh Shapiro speaks of
abolishing the death penalty, then
we have to see, is the death penalty
indeed a deterrent which in some way
would benefi t society in lessening
crime?” Leizerowski asked.

The charges that alleged Tree of
Life shooter Robert G. Bowers faces
are federal and outside of Shapiro’s
jurisdiction, meaning the death penalty
is still on the table in the trial slated to
start in April. ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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