| In 1957, writing about capital punishment, the French philosopher Albert Camus asked his readers to consider the most horrible crimes and criminals, including “an assassin whose crime was particularly repulsive (he had slaughtered a family of farmers, including the children)…who had killed in a sort of bloodthirsty frenzy but had aggravated his case by robbing his victims.” Only by paying particular attention to crimes where decent people would rightly be horrified did Camus think we could grasp the essential evil of the death penalty. |
| Elias Rodriquez surely committed such a crime when, on May 21, 2025, he murdered Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. They were Jewish staff members at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, who planned to become engaged. |
| Their murder was gruesome and shocking. Rodriguez shot Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim multiple times as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. Interim United States Attorney Jeanine Pirro claimed that “After the victims fell…Rodriguez allegedly continued firing at close range….” |
| And after the shooting, the killer yelled, “Free, free Palestine,” and told the police who arrested him, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.” |
| The criminal complaint filed on the day after the killings recounts that Rodriguez also “expressed admiration for the actions of an individual who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 2024, as a form of protest intended to draw attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rodriguez described this person’s actions as courageous and labeled him a 'martyr.’” |
| At the time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio rightly described the murder of Lischinsky and Milgrim as “a brazen act of cowardly, antisemitic violence.” Republicans and Democrats joined Rubio in condemning what Rodriguez did. |
| Almost a year later, on May 15, the Department of Justice filed a “Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty.” If ever anyone deserved to be executed, Rodriguez surely would qualify. |
| But seeking the death penalty in his case is a serious mistake, one which all of us who were horrified by his crime should condemn. This is especially true for members of the American Jewish community, whose resolve and commitment to respecting the human dignity of even those who perpetrate unspeakable evil have been sorely tested in recent years. |
| It will be hard for American Jews to publicly oppose the death penalty for Rodriguez, at the same time as Israel is seeking to use it in the cases of Hamas terrorists who are accused of perpetrating the October 7 atrocities. Add to that the violent antisemitic attacks that were carried out in England on May 1, and the plan by the commander of an Iranian-backed militia to attack a New York synagogue that was foiled last week. |
| In response to these incidents and others, it would be understandable for the Jewish community in this country and elsewhere to celebrate when their governments seek to impose the harshest punishments on those who want to kill Jews simply because they are Jews. However, we are called to the work of “repairing the world” (Tikkun Olam), and putting Rodriguez to death will not advance that work. |
| Recall what Camus said about the essential evil of the death penalty. He named that evil in different ways. He called it a “frightful torture, both physical and moral…which…is tantamount to deciding that that man has no chance of making amends.” In his view, the “right to live, which allows a chance to make amends, is the natural right of every man, even the worst man…. Without that right, moral life is utterly impossible.” |
| Capital punishment, he suggested, “upsets the only indisputable human solidarity-our solidarity against death….” |
| In his own life, Camus displayed such solidarity when he stood up for Jews during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. That’s why his opposition to capital punishment for anyone, anywhere, even those who do great evil, should be instructive to American Jews as they think about the Justice Department’s plan to execute Elias Rodriguez. |
| Opposition to capital punishment does not come easily to Jewish people. In fact, the Old Testament is filled with references to the execution of wrongdoers. |
| Examples are legion. |
| In the Book of Genesis, God says: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed.” The Book of Exodus decrees that “Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.” And Leviticus prescribes the death penalty for people who commit adultery. |
| However, early Rabbinical interpreters of Jewish law were less enthusiastic about capital punishment. They promoted the use of very complicated procedures in cases where execution might be a penalty, making it almost impossible to impose or carry out. Some even condemned religious courts, which handed down death sentences, calling them “tyrannical.” |
| After World War II, several prominent Jewish intellectuals and Holocaust survivors did not want to see Nazi war criminals put to death. In 1962, Martin Buber, a renowned philosopher, told a New York Times interviewer, “For such crimes there is no penalty.” |
| And he called Israel’s execution of Adolf Eichmann, a “mistake of historical dimensions.” |
| In a similar vein, after the Israeli Knesset recently passed a law allowing Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks to be hanged, Rabbi Aaron Leven, whose congregation is in Los Angeles, California, argued that “For anyone to claim that such a law is representative of Judaism is not only disgraceful, it is a chillul Hashem—a desecration of the Divine.” |
| Leven claims that the Jewish tradition teaches about “the sanctity of humility—to recognize that as human beings we do not have the right to pass judgment; that is only reserved for the Divine.” |
| Most major Jewish denominations in this country agree with Leven. For example, in 1959, the Union for Reform Judaism put out the following anti-death statement: “We believe there is no crime for which the taking of human life by society is justified, and that it is the obligation of society to evolve other methods in dealing with crime. We believe, further, that the practice of capital punishment serves no practical purpose…[and] debases our entire penal system and brutalizes the human spirit.” |
| They urged “all who cherish God’s mercy and love, to join in efforts to eliminate this practice which lies as a stain upon civilization and our religious conscience.” |
| In fact, after Rodriguez murdered Lischinsky and Milgrim, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, wrote to then Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her not to seek the death penalty for him. Pesner expressed the hope that Rodriguez would be held “accountable for his actions” so that he “is never again a threat to Jews or anyone else.” |
| “As you do so,” he pleaded, “do not compound the already deep pain by pursuing the taking of another life.” The rabbi explained that “Jewish courts have prohibited capital punishment for '2,000 years.’ Jewish tradition found capital punishment repugnant, and we continue to do so today.” |
| It is unfortunate for all of us, but especially for American Jews, that Bondi’s successor, Todd Blanche, did not heed Pesner’s advice. The decision to go forward with a capital prosecution is another kind of injury, an insult to Judaic tradition and Jewish values. |
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