A History of ‘L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty’: 6 Years – 5,000+ Members

Our group, “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” recently surged well past 5,000 members across the USA, Israel, and the world. The Israeli Knesset’s highly publicized passage of two death penalty laws earlier this year marks a significant reason for this abrupt increase in membership. Many observers have understandably assumed that L’chaim was born of these recent pieces of legislation that have become quite contentious across the Jewish world. The truth runs much deeper, however. L’chaim began fighting the proverbial man-made Angel of Death that is capital punishment many years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the face of an “epidemic” of state killings across the USA. The foundation of its mission lay in generations of dedicated Jewish death penalty abolitionists on whose shoulders the members of L’chaim proudly stand. L’chaim’s recent membership milestone merits a closer look at its history. Before delving into the provenance of L’chaim, a word about exactly what this group is and does.

What is L’chaim?

L’chaim is a Hebrew word, which means “To Life”, invoking the Biblical mandate וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים “And choose life” (Deut. 30: 19). Like most abolitionist groups, L’chaim advocates tirelessly against the death penalty in every single case, for both the innocent and the guilty – without exception. L’chaim’s stance is grounded in the fact that many of its members are direct descendants of Holocaust survivors, such as famous death penalty abolitionist and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), who famously said of capital punishment: “Death should never be the answer in a civilized society.”  Wiesel also said the following, which is akin to an anthem at L’chaim:​

“With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death.”

L’chaim follows in the footsteps of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, and other Jewish human rights luminaries, as well as Holocaust survivors like Nelly Sachs, who opposed the execution of the Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, whose murder Buber famously called a “great mistake.” L’chaim is keenly aware that the USA continues to carry on the Nazi legacy that is lethal injection, which was first implemented in this world by the Third Reich as part of its infamous Aktion T4 protocol, as developed by Dr. Karl Brandt, personal physician of Adolf Hitler. More and more states also continue to build and use gas chambers, including one that utilizes Zyklon B, the lethal gas of Auschwitz infamy, and lethal gas masks. All of this continues, even though the death penalty is proven to be racist in its application and that it has been disproven time and again as a deterrence to crime. Against all these developments, L’chaim members vociferously chant “NEVER AGAIN to state-sponsored murder!”

L’chaim’s list of international press is extensive. Its members make regular calls to all actively executing heads of state, sign daily petitions, draft op-eds, deliver synagogue sermons and programs, and engage in regular TV, online radio and podcast interviews In recent years, L’chaim’s activism has focused on the case of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter. This included a live presentation to Congregation Dor Hadash, a Reconstructionist Jewish community in Pittsburgh that rented space inside the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation, and was one of the three congregations affected by the October 27, 2018, mass shooting. It also featured our prayers for the victims of the Tree of Life shooting on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the annual Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty, as well as a full-length episode interview that we held on “Democracy Now!” with host Amy Goodman. (L’chaim’s very logo incorporates Eitz Chaim – the Tree of Life – in homage to that eponymous synagogue.)

L’chaim also ardently worked to save the life of longtime penpal Jedidiah Murphy, a Jewish man whom Texas put to death on “World Day Against the Death Penalty.” This included connecting Jedidiah with Professor Alan Dershowitz, who ultimately joined the legal team representing him on October 10th, 2023. As noted above, since Israel began its campaign that ultimately led to the passage of its two infamous death penalty bills earlier this year, L’chaim has been at the forefront of opposition. A significant component of all our advocacy efforts has been mobilizing the Jewish world by publishing dozens of op-eds in major Jewish publications, including the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and over 170 blog posts in the Times of Israel, as well as in Jewish Forward, Moment Magazine and countless others in the United States.

In addition to its public advocacy, L’chaim provides a ministry of presence from a Jewish perspective to help spiritually resurrect those in the jaws of the horrific legal torture system that is death row and the death penalty. L’chaim’s lifeline connects those behind the wall of death to a community of caring individuals. It also links various condemned inmates one to the other, as L’chaim often sends uplifting and soul-saving messages of support from individuals on death rows across the country to others who are the next in line for state killing. Members of L’chaim are pen pals with all individuals seeking Jewish spiritual support on any death row across the United States. Members also reach out to all women and men in line for state-murder as soon as they receive their execution warrants, providing spiritual support through correspondence (e-mail and letter), phone calls, and family support as they count down the days until their killing. As of this writing, L’chaim has been in touch with upwards of two hundred condemned human beings, scores of whom governments have already executed.

From Death to Life: A Brief History of L’chaim

To understand L’chaim’s origin, one must begin with its co-founders, one of whom is this author, Cantor Michael Zoosman. I am an ordained member of the Jewish clergy, a former Jewish prison chaplain, a current multi-faith chaplain, and a direct descendant of Holocaust victims who were saved by a Polish Catholic farmer and martyr who now is enshrined in the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum of the State of Israel. My personal spiritual journey from death penalty supporter to abolitionist is inextricably interwoven with my emergence from this shadow of the Holocaust. I co-founded L’chaim together with my colleague Abraham J. Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action, a national abolitionist group that serves as L’chaim’s umbrella organization. “Abe,” as the abolitionist world knows him so well, has been fighting the death penalty since long before I entered this world. Strikingly, though, both he and I initially supported the death penalty in our lives before seeing the light of abolition.

L’chaim would not exist without the veritable descent into death that was COVID-19, which is how Abe and I ultimately connected. By the spring of 2020, I watched the pandemic transform the world in unimaginable ways as the global body count rose daily. The scourge of death seemed unpreventable on countless fronts as human civilization strove to halt its metastasis across the Earth. And yet, as I saw it, there was yet another death “epidemic” simultaneously unfolding. Horrifically, this other “killing spree,” though on an infinitely smaller scale than COVID-19, was entirely preventable…

By this point in my life, like Abe, I already had completed my own transformation from a supporter of capital punishment to a confirmed death penalty abolitionist, as punctuated by my prior years of service as a Jewish prison chaplain in Canada. I therefore had followed news of executions increasingly closely since my return to the USA. For a brief period at the beginning of 2020, the pandemic led to a temporary halt in American executions. This hiatus lasted until Missouri was set to put to death Mr. Walter “Arkie” Barton on May 19th, 2020. In the days prior, I noticed that a group called Death Penalty Action (DPA) was going to be hosting its usual execution vigil to protest this killing. Unlike in the past, however, it would be held online rather than in person, due to the need for social distancing. I saw that Abe was listed as the DPA Executive Director and Co-Founder. I also learned that he had been a colleague at Amnesty International (AI) of my late father-in-law, Dr. Morton Winston, who had served as AI USA Board Chair. I emailed Abe and said I would like to participate in the online vigil. I also sent Abe a picture of me wearing a shirt on which was written “I am Troy Davis,” referencing the innocent Black man killed by Georgia in 2011. Like Troy Davis’ case, Mr. Barton’s was riddled with problems, and his guilt remained very much in doubt.

Noticing that my email address included “Cantor,” Abe asked if I might want to chant a prayer for the online vigil, and I heartily agreed. At the online interfaith vigil on the night of Mr. Burton’s execution, I chanted Psalm 23 in Hebrew. I later learned of a stunning synchronicity: at the exact time that I was intoning this psalm, Mr. Barton crossed over from this world into gei tzalmavet – the very “valley of the shadow of death” that I was invoking. His last statement was this: “I, Walter ‘Arkie’ Barton, am innocent and they are executing an innocent man!!” Walter “Arkie” Barton’s final clarion call echoed in my soul like the tekiah g’dolah/great loud blast of a shofar. With all the unpreventable death taking place across the world, here I was bearing virtual witness to the state-sponsored killing of an incarcerated human being against his will. The fire was lit in my soul, and its flames seemed to be fueled from a profound spiritual place…​

Just after the execution of Walter “Arkie” Barton, the summer of 2020 inaugurated what has come to be known as a “federal killing spree,” during which time the US government put to death 12 men and 1 woman in an unprecedented surge in federal killings. I was keenly aware that each of these deaths was entirely preventable. What’s more, working as a federal hospital chaplain at the time, I especially began to take these killings at the hands of my employer – the U.S. government – quite personally. I felt that it was incumbent upon me as a federal chaplain to reach out to those in line for state murder and convey to them an apology on behalf of the federal government for this grotesque violation of their most fundamental human right: life itself. I became pen pals with three of the 13 federally condemned men and women: two Muslims and one individual who identified with various Jewish rituals and practices. All three were eventually put to death.

By the time of these federal executions, social distancing measures had allowed for a return to in-person protest vigils. Abe spoke with me by phone for the first time after his return from one such vigil at the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, IN. It was then that Abe gave me the charge: “Now you have a voice,” he said, and “leaders should lead.” As a cantor and federal chaplain, I took this to heart. And so, I joined Abe and other committed abolitionists for the first time for an in-person protest in front of the U.S. Department of Justice to protest federal executions. I also later joined the Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty, which takes place annually from June 29 to July 2, the anniversaries of landmark death penalty-related decisions, on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. There, I chanted Kol Nidrei (the quintessential Jewish prayer asking for forgiveness) for the national sin of the death penalty.

By the end of 2020, even though executions were known COVID-19 superspreader events, individual states began to reopen their death chambers one by one, following the lead of the federal government. With each new death warrant, I made a new pen pal, who I ensured was aware that a great many people in the Jewish world – like Abe and myself – stood against what was taking place…and why. Though executions vigils were back to being live, they also continued online, enabling each one to include a visible and audible Jewish presence. Each vigil began with our recording of the traditional Jewish memorial prayer – Eil Malei Rachamim – for the victims involved. During the execution, we played a personalized recording of Psalm 23 recited in Hebrew, as we did for Walter “Arkie” Barton. Our prayers for the victims – both the victims of the initial crimes and the upcoming victims of state-sponsored murder – have been a central feature of each of the scores of online vigils that DPA has hosted. We shall continue doing so until the killings end and the United States joins the 70% of nations that already have abolished the death penalty.​

At Abe’s invitation, we built a landing page for Jewish death penalty abolitionists at the DPA website, partly to demonstrate that while rabbinic Judaism does offer an extremely limited place for capital punishment, given what we now know about deterrence and have experienced as a people, 21st-century Judaism should reject the death penalty.

Realizing the need to mobilize the Jewish world on this issue, we decided to embark upon a project to do just that. We formed a Facebook group that I first dubbed the Jewish Abolitionist Society (with the not-so-subtle acronym “J.A.B.S.”). It began to grow like wildfire as we posted relevant content that included communications from our death row penpals – with their permission – as well as news updates, examples of Jewish death penalty abolitionists, and reasons for Jews to oppose the death penalty. Abe suggested we find a more modern, specific name. After taking a vote, “L”chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” was born and soon became a name that made international news.

L’chaim’s Charge is more Relevant than Ever.

Born out of the ashes of a killing spree by the federal government and a lethal pandemic across our world, L’chaim offers renewed hope for preservation and honoring of life. The branches of its Eitz Chaim – Tree of Life – seek to extend to all corners of the globe to help shine a light of humanity, illuminating the darkness and inhumanity of this insidious Angel of Death. Perhaps most significantly, the work of L’chaim serves as a reminder that no matter how socially distant we might have to be – whether due to pathogens or prison walls – we all still can manifest a unity of spirit that chants a ceaseless mantra of “L’chaim…to Life!”

That charge is now more important than ever. One cannot overstate the relevance of the topic of capital punishment for world Jewry in 2026. In addition to Israel’s newly-enacted death penalty laws, the government of Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy, is executing its own citizens daily, and at a monstrous pace. In the United States, as discussed above, Robert Bowers, the perpetrator of the 2018 mass murder at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, received the death penalty in 2023. That same year witnessed the latest execution of one of the many Jewish individuals on American death rows. No longer can anyone claim, as individuals once did, that the death penalty is “not a Jewish issue.” It is indeed a core moral issue with which the Jewish community must come to terms. 21st-century Judaism must align itself with the “civilized humanity” of which Wiesel spoke regarding opposition to capital punishment. If it fails to do so, the results will prove deadly, not only for those condemned to execution, but to the future viability of Judaism itself in a world where values, ethics and human rights increasingly – and appropriately – form the foundation for individuals’ lifestyles, lifestances and beliefs.
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Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

Jewish Prison Chaplain

Co-Founder: “L’chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty”

Advisory Committee Member, Death Penalty Action

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