Speech
A Traditional Jewish View on Capital Punishment (1955)
We are here gathered tonight because of a common purpose: the exercise of our democratic rights in seeking to secure the abolition of the death penalty in this Commonwealth. I believe that the origin of our commonly shared opinion and the goal of our activities, our starting point and end point, are the same. We all begin with a deep and ineffable reverence for human life, and we aim at the legal abolition of capital punishment, which outrages this sense of reverence for life. But the route we take from the starting point to the end point, from origin to goal, differs with each of us, and affects the quality, temper, and mood of our opinions. Jew, Christian, and agnostic, scientist and lawyer, each develops his opinion differently. I think, therefore, that we are acting wisely in giving expression to the different, individual, and unique ways in which many of us arrive at the same conclusion: the necessity of abolishing the death penalty. I speak as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. To me, human life has infinitely more than sentimental or social value. It has the very highest religious value, for man was created in the image of God. When, therefore, we discuss the disposition of human life, we involve ourselves directly in our relations with the Creator. And if the problem of capital punishment is of such great religious import, my judgment on it must be derived from the classical sources of the Jewish tradition. Allow me to make several brief prefatory remarks on the nature of these sources. Jewish law, which includes Jewish religion, philosophy, theology, morals, and ethics, has two origins – they are the two avenues of the divine revelation to man. More well-known is the Written Law, which is Scripture. The Bible, or Written Law, is, to our way of thinking, the exact record of God’s revelation to Moses. It contains a good part of the civilized culture of the ages that preceded it (the “Noahide laws”) with certain changes and additions effected by divine inspiration. It…
