66 Rabbi Richard A. Block
not been inhibited by the scruples of academic fastidiousness in their... exploitation of the tradition.’
Far from proving the case against capital punishment, the text demonstrates that Jewish post-biblical tradition contains a range of views, which are mirrored in today’s policy debates. It reflects a fundamental tension between a reverence for human life so profound that it embraces even the most despicable criminal and society’s right to take all measures necessary to protect its citizens and insure its own survival.
If additional evidence be needed that the Jewish post-biblical tradition does not find capital punishment conceptually“repugnant” it is plentiful. Tractate Sanhedrin, in significant part, is a virtual executioner’s manual.® It sets out and describes, ad nauseum, the four methods of execution considered legal in Jewish capital cases: stoning, burning, decapitation and strangulation.” For Maimonides , each of these is a distinct mitzvah; hence they collectively constitute four of the 613 commandments.® Of the four, strangulation was preferred by the rabbis because it was the one that did least injury to the body. The person would be sunk to the knees in mud and then strangled with a hard cloth wrapped in a soft one which was twisted around his neck and pulled in opposite directions until he suffocated.”
Talmudic sources explicitly affirm that the needs of society can justify the death penalty!” even when the Torah does not classify the crime as a capital offense, so long as the punishment is required“to safeguard” the Torah ." Death is held to be the just and appropriate punishment for numerous crimes and to effectuate the principle of midah keneged midah when a life has been taken.!? We also find talmudic support for the notion that capital punishment was preventative.'® Since capital punishment was held to expiate the crime, it was also said to be in the interest of both society and the defendant.! Ultimately, capital punishment was understood to represent just retribution. As the Mishnah states,“And lest you say,‘Why should we be guilty of the blood of this man?’ was it not already said,‘When the wicked perish there is rejoicing.””’> We may or may not share these views, but they clearly support the Torah '’s jurisprudence and demonstrate that, as De Sola Pool concluded,“It[is] beyond doubt that the Rabbis approved of the theory of capital punishment.”
May we yet say that the CCAR resolution was half right, that Jewish tradition rejects capital punishment in practice? Or, as