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Judaism and capital punishment

Anyone reading the Old Testament list of 36 capital crimes might think that Judaism is in favour of capital punishment, but they'd be wrong. During the period when Jewish law operated as a secular as well as a religious jurisdiction, Jewish courts very rarely imposed the death penalty. The state of Israel has abolished the death penalty for any crime that is now likely to be tried there.

The classic Old Testament texts quoted to justify capital punishment are these:

Although they seem clear these texts are commonly misunderstood.

To really understand Jewish law one must not only read the Torah but consult the Talmud, an elaboration and interpretation by rabbinical scholars of the laws and commandments of the Torah.

The rabbis who wrote the Talmud created such a forest of barriers to actually using the death penalty that in practical terms it was almost impossible to punish anyone by death.

The rabbis did this with various devices:

• interpreting texts in the context of Judaism's general respect for the sanctity of human life
• emphasising anti-death texts such as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill'
• interpreting texts to make them very narrow in their application
• refusing to accept any but the most explicit Torah texts proposing the death penalty
• finding alternative punishments, or schemes of compensation for victims' families
• imposing procedural and evidential barriers that made the death penalty practically unenforceable

The result of this is that there are very few examples of people being executed by Jewish law in rabbinic times.

Israel

In 1954, Israel abolished capital punishment except for those who committed Nazi war crimes.

In the 54 years that Israel has existed as an independent state, only one person has been executed. This person was Adolf Eichman, a Nazi war criminal with particular responsibility for the Holocaust.

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• Capital punishment