Ask the Rabbis | Should Jews Support the Increased Use of Capital Punishment?

Rabbi Gershon Winkler
Walking Stick Foundation
Golden, CO

HUMANIST

I do not believe Jews should support expanding the use of the death penalty, not only because taking a life is a grave and terrible act but because it forecloses the very purpose of punishment. Judaism teaches that justice is our responsibility. That should focus us on the moral consequences that unfold within a human lifetime. To spend years, even a lifetime, living with the knowledge of the harm one has caused is punishment.

Execution cuts off that possibility.

The rabbinic tradition seems to have shared a profound discomfort with the finality of capital punishment. While the Torah authorizes it, the rabbis of the Talmud added conditions making its actual application so difficult that executions became extraordinarily rare. The courts left open the possibility of teshuvah, believing that even those who have committed terrible wrong retain the capacity for moral reckoning. They also knew the limits of human certainty. No court, however conscientious, is infallible.

Justice requires that society be protected from those who commit grievous crimes. But justice also calls for humility. It should leave room, however small, for repentance, accountability and the recognition that taking a life is a power human beings ought to exercise, if at all, only with the greatest reluctance.

Rabbi Jeffrey Falick
Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Metro Detroit
Farmington Hills, MI

RENEWAL

Increasing the use of capital punishment would be a terrible mistake. Studies of the practice of capital punishment have taught us everything we need to know: Putting criminals to death does not deter crime, and it cannot be implemented impartially. Capital punishment is rife with racial discrimination and discrimination against the poor, not to mention human error. For every eight executions carried out in the modern era, one person on death row has been exonerated. Jews should oppose capital punishment here at home. (Join the group “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.”) And we should be appalled at Israel’s new laws, which institute near-mandatory death sentences for Palestinians convicted of a fatal attack on Israeli Jews. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the military courts that will try these cases “have an approximately 96 percent conviction rate, based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.” This is not deterrence, it’s revenge.

The rabbinic Judaism that we have inherited notably amended the death penalties mandated in the Torah—so much so that if a Sanhedrin, or high court, executed a single criminal in seven years, it was denigrated as a “bloodthirsty” court. The rabbis debated whether abandoning the death penalty completely might undermine the judicial system. But they clearly cared that a Sanhedrin not be tainted by revenge or the thirst for blood.

In the modern State of Israel, capital punishment has long been on the books for war crimes but has only been used twice. That in itself is a cautionary tale. The court meted out the death penalty to Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In 1948, Israel executed an IDF officer, Meir Tobianski, for treason. One year later he was exonerated of all charges.

Rabbi Gilah Langner
Washington, DC

RECONSTRUCTIONIST

Jews should oppose increased use of capital punishment. While some laws in the Torah call for it, we reject absolutely the use of the death penalty for blasphemy, homosexuality, breaking Shabbat, or for a “wayward and defiant son,” among many other “violations.” That there were (and are) voices that call for such cruel punishment only shows the great tragedy in the way we human beings can sometimes justify our prejudices, cruelty and vengefulness under the cover of “law.”

For example, Israel’s new death penalty law, passed in March, lowers the threshold for the use of capital punishment, in this case hanging, and was written in such a way that it would most likely be limited to Palestinians. This is a travesty of justice and of Jewish values, one that all Jews should oppose. A famous passage in the Mishnah almost 2,000 years ago warns that “If the Sanhedrin executes one person in seven years it is considered a destructive court.” Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya raises the “seven years” to “70 years.” I’m with him.

Rabbi Caryn Broitman
Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center
Vineyard Haven, MA

REFORM

Global trends indicate that capital punishment is more often being abolished than increased. More than two-thirds of countries around the world have ended its use. This trend toward upholding the sacredness and dignity of each life is at its core a very Jewish stance.

The Torah does suggest the death penalty as appropriate punishment for certain ritual crimes (idolatry), certain sexual sins (incest and adultery) and criminal acts such as murder. It further describes methods of execution. So, some may argue that capital punishment is consistent with Jewish values.

Yet such punishments were rarely carried out. The rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud set very high ethical and legal standards for enabling capital punishment. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides declared “it is far better…to acquit 1,000 guilty people than to put a single innocent person to death” (Sefer HaMitzvot). In this view, to support capital punishment in even the most extreme circumstances is inherently not Jewish. This Jew sides with Maimonides.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Novak Winer
Hebrew Union College
Los Angeles, CA

CONSERVATIVE

Elias Rodriguez was indicted on charges of murdering two young Israeli Embassy staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in May 2025. Prosecutors call the attack a premeditated hate crime and are seeking the death penalty. My heart wants Rodriguez put to death. But, given the deep influence of the rabbinic tradition, my head knows better.

The rabbis of the Talmud discussed capital punishment at great length, establishing barriers that made such a sentence extremely difficult to carry out. According to the Mishnah, capital cases had to be decided by a Sanhedrin of 23 judges. If the conviction in a capital case was unanimous but rendered too quickly, the accused was acquitted on the assumption that the judges had not adequately considered the possibility of the defendant’s innocence.

The rabbis also legislated that the offense had to be witnessed by two people, each of whom warned the perpetrator immediately prior to committing the act that it was a capital offense. Further, the perpetrator must have verbally acknowledged the warning and stated that he knew the act was a capital crime and was committing it anyway.

I can’t deny my heart its feelings, but the sages’ wisdom should guide us when considering such important societal issues. While some may dismiss these insights because the rabbis had no actual power to impose capital punishment, I prefer to focus on the values that guide their discussion and challenge all of us to reflect on what a just and moral society should look like.

Rabbi Amy S. Wallk
Temple Beth El
Springfield, MA

MODERN ORTHODOX

The Bible is full of death penalties. However, the rabbis concluded that Judaism’s greatest message, the sanctity of life, would be better advanced by sharply limiting the death penalty in the future. They set up procedures that drastically reduced executions. A regional court of 23 judges, or a full Sanhedrin of 71 judges, must judge every capital punishment case and uphold every death penalty. The death penalty was so rare that if a Sanhedrin carried out an execution once in seven years (some say once in 70 years!) it became known as the “bloody” or “destructive” Sanhedrin (Makkot 1.10).

Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon, two of the Talmud’s greatest rabbis, said that if they were on the Sanhedrin there would never be an execution. (To be fair, Rabban Gamliel, the president of the Sanhedrin, said the total abolition of the death penalty would lead to more homicide and violence.)

The modern State of Israel did not generally use the death penalty, except in 1961 when it executed Adolf Eichmann as the architect of the Holocaust. The law recently passed by the Knesset under the pressure of Minister of Internal Security Itamar Ben-Gvir was done to impress his Kahanist/racist base. The major security agencies said that the threat of execution would not deter terrorists. This law, like Ben-Gvir, is regressive and goes against the great Jewish teaching of the sacredness of life.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life (Hadar)
Riverdale, NY

ORTHODOX

The Torah clearly specifies the death penalty for certain offenses; on the other hand, very strict requirements make it almost impossible to execute anyone, not only in Jewish law but in the Noahide laws that apply to non-Jews. Where does that leave us? You have to strike a balance. I take my cue from a responsum by the great Rav Moshe Feinstein, written when then New York Governor Mario Cuomo convened a forum of thinkers from different communities to sift arguments about the death penalty. (Cuomo, a Catholic, opposed the death penalty, but New York State public opinion favored it.) Feinstein reviewed all the Talmudic sources that make it difficult or impossible to apply capital punishment. Then he said, in essence, that this is only true in societies where the spilling of human blood has not become an everyday affair, and that when it does, societies have the right to defend themselves by practicing capital punishment.

Most capital convictions in the United States are probably not justified by Jewish law, especially given how many are overturned based on DNA evidence. The exceptions are when there actually are eyewitnesses, or when the nature of the crime requires public justice. I believe the move in Israel to apply capital punishment to certain terrorists is proper, because we know from Palestinian prisoners that most expect eventually to be released in a trade. Making the worst kind of terrorism subject to a quick execution would likely deter more would-be terrorists from their horrific deeds.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Cross-Currents
Los Angeles/Jerusalem

CHABAD

I wouldn’t frame it as a Jewish question but as a more universal one. In the Torah, capital punishment is an option, even though it was rarely used. Whether that can be applied to modern times is a very big question. Logically, there are crimes that are so severe—deliberate murder, for instance—that the perpetrator may have forfeited the right to live. There are certain crimes that are so horrible that capital punishment may be warranted. We didn’t decide that; God did. But obviously that can be carried out only with all the proper qualifications, conditions and witnesses—as well as by proper authority. We have to be extremely careful to determine whether these conditions apply today. In the broader context, are alternatives to the death penalty such as life in prison a better punishment, or even more cruel?

From the Torah’s point of view, I wouldn’t advocate capital punishment, but I wouldn’t rule it out either. And universally speaking, there are merits to it, but only in rare circumstances. I would look at the facts of each case, keeping in mind also that we have an obligation to seek every possible way to prevent and deter crime.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson
Meaningful Life Center
Brooklyn, NY

SEPHARDIC

The sages of the Mishnah undoubtedly led a legislative effort to minimize executions, but there are other opinions in the Mishnah. One opinion sets the optimal rate at once in seven years, another at once in 70 years, another at no executions ever, and a fourth contradicts them all by saying that by such leniency “you are increasing the number of murderers in the nation.”

That opinion is worth considering, especially in light of God’s words to Noah after the flood: “He who sheds a human’s blood, by humans his blood shall be shed.” The Torah says that it is the responsibility of humans to bring a murderer to trial, to make sure that innocent lives are not taken and to see that the punishment is a deterrent.

The current debate, in Israel and other countries, about the death penalty must consider each country’s legal system and how it ascertains a murderer’s identity and sanity. However, if we refer to traditional sources, we cannot ignore those who support the death penalty, especially when dealing with terrorists and cold-blooded killers. Such people have denied other humans the right to live and have rejected the concept of b’tselem Elohim, that all people are created in the image of God. As we have witnessed time and again, the reluctance to apply capital punishment leads to the continued loss of innocent lives.

Rabbi Haim Ovadia
Congregation Ramath Orah
New York, NY