A group of more than 100 rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations have issued a statement expressing their opposition to the use of the death penalty in the United States. The statement, posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz (pictured) in Forward.com’s Scribe—a curated contributor network of Jewish thought—called for an end to the “cruel practice” of capital punishment and “for the beginning of a new paradigm of fair, equitable restorative justice.” The rabbis said that “[a]s Jews and citizens, we believe that governments must protect the dignity and rights of every human being. By using the death penalty, our country fails to live up to this basic requirement.” The rabbis invoked classical Jewish thought that, “[w]hile not categorically opposed to capital punishment, … saw the death penalty as so extreme a measure that they all but removed it from their system of justice.” The Sages, they wrote, “had a very high bar for reliable evidence, were eager to find ways to acquit, and were deeply concerned about the dignity of [the] condemned. In contrast, our American system today lacks the highest safeguards to protect the lives of the innocent and uses capital punishment all too readily.” The rabbis criticized the unreliability, unfairness, and costliness of the death penalty as administered across the U.S., exacerbated by a defendant’s poverty or “lack of access to legal resources.” “The consequences of this system,” they wrote, “are not only fundamentally unjust but also produce racially disparate outcomes.” They also expressed concerned about the system sending innocent people to death row: “too often,” they said, “the wrong person is convicted …. We do not naively believe that everyone on death row is completely innocent of any crime. Yet, it is time to see the death penalty for what it is: not as justice gone awry, but a symptom of injustice as status quo.”

(S. Yanklowitz, “Over 100 Rabbi’s Denounce The Death Penalty,” The Forward, August 10, 2017.) See Religion and New Voices.

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