I used to support the death penalty – then, I became a Jewish prison chaplain

At its core, the death penalty feeds one of the basest desires known to humankind: the thirst for vengeance.  The 5,000+ members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” — a group I co-founded in 2020 — have joined millions of other death penalty abolitionists across the world time and again in recent years to demonstrate how capital punishment is innately unjust and inhumane. And yet, humanity still has not excised this cancer from civilized humanity and overcome the seemingly insatiable hunger for violent and lethal retribution against those who have committed horrific crimes.

The United States is no exception. Christa Pike catapulted into international news late last month when she survived two torturous doses of lethal drugs in a botched execution attempt by the state of Tennessee. Her case was one of countless others in this millennia-old tradition of brutal retributive justice—a history that penologist Michel Foucault painfully documented in his seminal work Discipline and Punish.

I personally know how difficult it is to transcend the overwhelming longing for violent retaliation. I grew up as an ardent supporter of the death penalty, gripped in the spell of the same vengeful bloodlust that has plagued so many of my species. I therefore strive never to judge others who harbor such feelings. I hope a brief review of my own transformation might compel some to reexamine their beliefs about retributive killings.

Holocaust Origins

My change of heart took place over three decades — and it both began and ended with the Holocaust. Many of my childhood Passover Seders and Jewish/secular holiday gatherings were punctuated by my grandmother and her sister, of blessed memory, sharing details of their harrowing Shoah (Holocaust) experiences. Their survival, and, by extension, my very existence would not have been possible without the martyrdom of Mr. Michał Cegielski, a Polish Catholic man who hid them and other members of my family on his farm at the risk of death — a penalty he ultimately received. My family and I attempted for decades to locate Mr. Cegielski’s full identity, and now he is rightfully honored in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Israel.

During my formative years, I believed firmly that anyone who had tormented and murdered my family members, or, for that matter, Mr. Cegielski — deserved to suffer and die. At times, I even felt that I would be prepared to tear them apart with my bare hands, and as painfully as possible, for what they did to my family and my people. The anger that intergenerational trauma had birthed decades before I entered the world was still palpable and powerful, instilling in my heart a visceral rage. This feeling logically extended in my mind to any human being who committed such a heinous act as murder, and I imagined that many other family members of victims felt the same way I did. As I saw it, the Torah clearly endorsed my feelings with its famous declaration of “ayin takha ayin” — “an eye for an eye.” (Lev. 24: 19-21).

Becoming a Jewish Prison Chaplain

Not until my service as a Jewish prison chaplain in Canada did I seriously begin to explore the issue of state killings. I had sought out this unique pastoral care work after spending years visiting my former college roommate and friend “Levi” (whose identity I have shielded here for confidentiality) when he was incarcerated at notorious prisons across New York State, including ultimately at Sing Sing, which once was a home to one of that state’s execution chambers. Previously, while in university with me, Levi had experienced a psychotic break causing him to assault and nearly kill a family member violently. My visits with Levi over the years made me realize the need for spiritual support for the incarcerated, and exposed me for the first time to others in prisons who had indeed taken human lives.

In my newfound role as a prison chaplain in Canada, I began to witness first-hand many profound examples of transformation in individuals whose vicious crimes might have qualified them for the death penalty in the US. I became well-acquainted with these men and women, who emerged not as monstrous and unfeeling murderers and rapists, but rather as complex human beings, not so different from my friend Levi — or even from myself. Among them were individuals who, after years of incarceration, showed sincere contrition, offered heartfelt apologies, and demonstrated fundamental behavioral change—a phenomenon Judaism calls teshuvah (repentance). Were these really the sort of people I previously envisioned tearing asunder as a righteous avenger?

These experiences created within my heart new conflicting feelings about capital punishment. They inspired me finally to take the time to learn the traditional Jewish understanding of the Biblical “eye for an eye.” I was shocked to discover that, in Rabbinic parlance, this phrase referred to financial compensation for the value of those eyes. In its historical context, this lex talionis was intended to curtail, rather than augment, the collective bloodlust of expansive vengeful massacres that societies practiced in response to killings in ancient times — and still all too often today.

I likewise explored the prodigious safeguards that rabbinic Judaism built into Jewish law to make the death penalty extremely difficult, if not impossible, to carry out, lest an innocent person be executed. Simultaneously, I watched the televised saga of the execution of Troy Davis as it unfolded in Georgia in 2011, when the reality of the state killing of an innocent human being was laid bare before my eyes. The clarion call of medieval sage Rabbi Moses Maimonides, who asserted that “it is better to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death,” reverberated in my soul. Last but not least, I came to understand what many modern-day Jewish authorities have realized: that the notion of capital punishment as deterrence to any would-be murderers — which was a primary justification for keeping it at all in Talmudic parlance — had been disproven.

The Unconscionable Nazi Legacies of Various Execution Methods

Still, some doubts lingered. What about the so-called “worst of the worst,” such as the Nazis and Hitler’s willing executioners who had committed deadly acts of terror and killed members of my own family? Paradoxically, it took the shadow of the Holocaust itself to cast off my final misgivings for the light of abolition.

In my ongoing study of capital punishment, I discovered to my horror that lethal injection — the main form of execution used in the US — was a direct Nazi legacy. The Third Reich first implemented this killing method as part of their infamous Aktion T4 protocol, using lethal injection to kill people deemed “unworthy of life.” Dr. Karl Brandt, Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, developed this protocol. I was appalled to learn that the kind of murderous hate that compelled the Nazis to inaugurate lethal injection in this world had overtaken my own spirit in my advocacy for death. The bloodlust that filled my heart effectively blinded me to the unconscionable Nazi legacy that I was unwittingly supporting. In this way, I had indeed become living proof of Gandhi’s famous warning: “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

If this were not enough, I soon learned that American states continued to gas prisoners to death and to build gas chambers throughout the US, with at least one state allowing the use of Zyklon B, of Auschwitz infamy, to kill defenseless inmates against their will. Regular American employment of firing squads and the more recent prospect in Israel of hangings for state-killings also served as triggering reminders of Nazi crimes.

Carrying the Torch of Jewish Death Penalty Abolitionists

Celebrated Jewish death penalty abolitionists such as Elie Wiesel and Martin Buber grasped the danger of giving the state the power to kill its prisoners long before I was born. As Wiesel professed: “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” Wiesel even referred to Israel’s highly controversial 1962 execution of Nazi perpetrator Adolph Eichmann as “an example not to be followed,” while Buber called it a great “mistake.” The realization that these and other Jewish and non-Jewish human rights luminaries fully aligned with this cause completed my change of heart. The Holocaust had morphed from one of my most significant rationalizations for the death penalty to one of the most important reasons, as I saw it, to stand against state-sponsored murder in every single case, including for the Tree of Life synagogue shooter and the terrorists who perpetrated the unfathomable massacre of October 7th, 2023.

Members of L’chaim and I continue to be galvanized by lofty examples of Jewish death penalty abolitionists born from the embers of the Holocaust. One such particularly eminent figure who rightfully received global attention upon his death in 2024 was former French Minister of Justice Robert Badinter, of blessed memory. The Holocaust experience of Badinter’s family was punctuated by the unfathomable murder of his father, Simon Badinter in the Sobibor concentration camp in 1943. Emboldened by this killing and the lessons of the unparalleled conflagration of the Shoah, Badinter went on in his illustrious legal and political career to successfully advocate for the ultimate abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981, the year I was born. A recent tribute celebrating his accomplishments poignantly described that when Badinter was confronted with Klaus Barbie, the Nazi who had arrested and sent his father to his death, he proudly “stood by his opposition to the death penalty and did not wish nor seek to have his father’s killer executed. He thereby demonstrated a rare willingness to place principle over the powerful personal desire to avenge the brutal death of a beloved parent.”

Like Badinter and countless family members of murder victims, I, too, have managed in my own way over time to overcome the bloodlust that had been growing like a cancer within me. Another poignant example is my fellow L’chaim co-founder, Abraham J. Bonowitz, who also used to support the death penalty before learning the horrifying truth about the “machinery of death.” I firmly believe others can do the same…

“Love is as strong as death” (Shir HaShirim 8:6)

People indeed are capable of change, from those who have vengeance deeply rooted in their hearts, as I once did, to those who have committed some of the most violent acts imaginable. The human penchant for transformation applies universally, reflecting life’s intrinsically ever-changing nature. This potential for redemptive adaptation is wired into every mortal’s DNA and woven into the fabric of every enlightened society.

Christa Pike, a practicing Buddhist, recently informed me that while in the execution chamber, she elected to chant the Metta Sutra – The Lovingkindness Meditation – with her spiritual advisor. As she described it, this included the refrain:

“May you be at ease.
May you be at peace.
May you be kind and gentle with yourself.
May you be filled with loving kindness.”

Christa’s intention, she said, was to show love even to those who were seeking to harm her.

Perhaps, when all hearts and minds eclipse the collective cycle of violence and vengeance, human civilization will be able to fully tap this potential energy that Christa has found, finally realizing the ancient wisdom articulated in the biblical Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim, 8: 6) that “Love is as strong as death…”

Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM

Jewish Prison Chaplain

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

Advisory Committee Member: Death Penalty Action