Today I testified at two hearings of committees of the New Hampshire State Senate. As I approached the State House today, I stopped and said a b'racha: Baruch… She'asani Ben Chorin. Praised are You, Who has made me a free person.
The second hearing was about a bill to cap the annual interest for car-title loans in the state at 300%. This is a kind of often-predatory lending, which until recently was limited to much lower interest. I have some knowledge of better forms of small finance, particularly for low-income people, and of course the Jewish ideal of free loans as the highest form of tzedakah. Special kudos to Rev. John Gregory-Davis from the Upper Valley, who spoke eloquently. And to the Granite State Organizing Project and its executive director, Sarah Jane Knoy, for getting us there. When Rev. Gregory-Davis spoke, she invited all of us clergy present to stand next to him in solidarity.
Earlier, I spoke at the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on a bill to repeal the death penalty. Here are my remarks:
Senator Carson and Members of the Committee: Thank you for listening to us as citizens today, and for your service especially around the most difficult moral issues concerning justice and public safety. My name is Jonathan Spira-Savett, and I am a rabbi from Nashua, serving Temple Beth Abraham. I speak to you today as a religious Jew, and a member of the Jewish Clergy Association of New Hampshire. We serve congregations from the Lakes Region to the Masschusetts border, from the Seacoast to the Monadnock Region and the Upper Valley. Beyond the walls of our congregations we bring spiritual presence and care to Jewish people and their families throughout the state. Our members are proud to serve as members and leaders of interfaith coalitions all around New Hampshire.
I want to share with you some insights about capital punishment from the Jewish religious tradition, which is also itself a tradition of law. These insights have led the Jewish Clergy Association and our movements’ national rabbinic leadership to seek repeal of capital punishment. I offer these perspectives to inform your decision, since the law of the state can never be the law of one faith, even a faith as deeply held as mine or that of my Christian sisters and brothers. Jewish citizens involved in criminal justice are responsible to the laws of the state, whether we serve as jurors, police officers, prosecutors or counsel for the accused.
Some of you in this hall may be surprised to hear a Jewish religious leader speaking out against capital punishment. After all, our Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, is where you find the law of “an eye for an eye” and “a life for a life.” By one count the Torah lists thirty-six offenses punishable by death. Not only the murderer, but the adulterer, the one who violates the Sabbath, and the son who rebels against his parents.
But Judaism in all its forms today is rooted in the authoritative interpretations of the rabbis from the second century and onward. As they explored biblical law, they trembled in the face of the power God had given them to constitute human courts that might put a person to death. So our Sages taught that a person could not be executed unless two people report absolutely identical eye-witness testimony of the moment of the murder. They would have to testify that the criminal was warned that the act would be punishable by death, and that they heard the person express that he or she understood the consequences of the crime.
Only a special court of twenty-three could hear a capital case, judges of perfect character, training, and even pedigree. Then the witnesses would themselves undergo a withering warning in court: In capital cases, the accused’s blood and the blood of all his descendents to the end of time hang on your testimony… One who destroys a single life, it is as though he had destroyed the whole world, and one who sustains a single life, it is as though he had sustained the whole world.
Jewish tradition chooses the moment when a witness faces a murderer, a person who destroyed a life and an ongoing world, exactly the person whose life we have the least regard for — that difficult moment is when Judaism teaches its most famous teaching about the value of a single life.
The value of life, the possibility of error or just approximation in court, the possibility that no group of humans may have the absolute integrity, training, and requisite awe at the power of life and death — these led the early Jewish sages to keep capital punishment on the books, but impossible to carry out. As one rabbi says in the Talmud, a court that executes one person in seventy years is a bloodthirsty court.
The example of the State of Israel is instructive. Religious law is one source of Israeli criminal law. This is a country whose population at one time included half a million survivors of the Nazi death machine. Yet the only time a civilian court in Israel has executed someone was the case of a single Nazi war criminal, a member of the innermost circle and mastermind of the Holocaust. Terrorists who have committed murder in the most grisly ways, and killed children and families, serve life in prison in Israel.
The position that we should execute certain murderers is more than just a feeling. It too is rooted in reflectiom, a sense of justice, and compassion for the families of victims, and these too are religious motives. But as we have long ago come to understand that no God would want us to have the power to execute Sabbath violators, or rebellious sons, or those who betray a wife or husband, so it is time to give up in this state the power to execute murderers.
As a Jew and a rabbi in this state, I am honored to stand on this challenging matter of life and death with the bishops and leaders of the other faith communities. We do not approach every public policy issue of life in the same way, but here we do. I urge you and the full Senate to bring an end to capital punishment in our state and pass HB 1170. Thank you.
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