The Tree of Life and the Bloody Sanhedrin

The verdict of guilty brought in against the psychopath who slew 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue at Pittsburgh is a moment to think about a bloody Sanhedrin. That is the phrase connoting the religious court from biblical times that was prepared to hand down a capital sentence as often as once every seven, or, some say, 70 years. It reflects the reluctance in Jewish law to mete out a sentence of death in all but the rarest of cases.We would not represent ourselves as sages of Jewish — or any other — law. We get that the killer who struck at the Tree of Life is being tried under American laws. Our guess, though, is that what happened at the Tree of Life is a crime that would have moved even a non-bloody Sanhedrin to send the killer to his doom. It is hard to think of a particle of due process that the biblical sages could have found lacking.It is true that the killer — Robert Bowers, a truck driver who expressed hatred of Jews — had admitted to the killings and offered a guilty plea in exchange for his life, albeit a life in prison with no chance of parole. It is also true that the prosecutors turned down that deal and shouldered the risk of a trial so as to maintain the option of a capital sentence. The Associated Press reports that most of the victims’ families expressed support for the decision.Those were all courageous and, in our view, righteous decisions. The federal prosecutor had told the jury that the killer had turned a sacred house of worship into a “hunting ground,” targeting, as the AP summed it up, his victims because of their religion. Reading the names of each of the 11 victims he killed, prosecutor Mary Hahn asked the jury to “hold this defendant accountable … and hold him accountable for those who cannot testify.”Prosecutors presented evidence of what the AP characterized as the killer’s “deep-seated animosity toward Jews and immigrants.” Bowers had, as the AP put it, “extensively posted, shared or liked antisemitic and white supremacist content on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right, and praised Hitler and the Holocaust.” Bowers told police that “all these Jews need to die,” the AP quoted Ms. Hahn as saying.All in all, it is hard to see anything in the trial that would suggest their gamble — to hold out for justice — should not be redeemed. “I am grateful to God for getting us to this day,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life Congregation said in a statement. He expressed thanks “for the law enforcement who ran into danger to rescue me, and the U.S. Attorney who stood up in court to defend my right to pray.”It’s a remarkable feature of American law that the individuals who will decide the killer’s fate are not, like the Sanhedrin, sages of Talmud and Torah. Rather, they have the sagacity of the American citizen, chosen in a voir dire designed to protect the accused as well as the cause of justice. Now that they have determined that the accused is guilty, it is the part of the jury to decide the guilty man’s fate — whether life in prison or no life at all. Even if the means of capital punishment prescribed by both the Bible and the Talmud — stoning, burning, decapitation, and strangulation — have been more often honored in the breach rather than the observance, their inclusion in Holy Writ suggests that they serve as a deterrent in a just society. Some crimes are just that heinous. Taking the lives of those at prayer appears to be among those acts that merit paying the ultimate price.We are not insensitive to the awesome power of execution. The sage Maimonides judged that it is “better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.” Bowers’s guilt, though, is self-admitted and has been confirmed by a jury, on the basis of evidence and consistent with the guarantees of due process. Crimes like this one are why a just Sanhedrin meted out a capital sentence, however rare.

The Tree of Life and the Bloody Sanhedrin

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