Will Biden Become Another Pontius Pilate This Holiday Season?
This year, the Jewish and Christian winter holidays are in cosmic synchrony. The evening of Dec. 25 — Christmas Day on the Gregorian calendar — falls on the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev — the first night of Hanukkah on the lunar calendar.
These popular festivals in turn align with the very same week of President Biden’s federal death row clemency decision, in which the president attempted to act like the Divine, choosing “who shall live and who shall die.” This synchronicity has led this death penalty abolitionist and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty to reflect on the clemency verdict from the context of the execution of one of the most notable Jews in history: Jesus of Nazareth, whose birth is celebrated by billions of Christians the world over at this time of year.
While not a follower of Jesus, I admire the many strides in human rights that he made for the world, just as I have tremendous respect for my sisters and brothers who lovingly proclaim his godliness. Still, like all mainstream Jews, I do not ascribe to Jesus any more divinity than the Tzelem Elohim — Divine Image — in which Judaism teaches that God created all neshamot/souls. With this same imago dei in mind, I join my fellow 3,700-plus members of L’chaim in standing wholeheartedly against all state murders of incarcerated souls, including the Romans’ killing of Jesus.
L’chaim’s abolitionist stance applies without exception to those who have committed the most heinous of crimes targeting the Jewish community; namely, the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.
Regretfully, Biden — himself a faithful and practicing Catholic — does not seem to agree. While L’chaim indeed applauds Biden for saving 37 lives through commutation this week, its members painfully lament that for the moment he has elected not to extend the basic human right of life to three human beings still in line for state murder, including Bowers.
In this situation, many Christians likely would ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” It would certainly behoove Biden to call to mind his messiah figure now as he weighs his singular ability to finish the job and stay the executioner’s sword for Bowers and the two other human beings he has elected for death.
Christian abolitionists such as Sister Helen Prejean, Rev. Jeff Hood, Shane Claiborne, Rev. Jack Sullivan, Rev. Sharon Risher, Sister Barbara Battista and countless other Christian leaders, not to mention the pope, have reminded the world time and again that Jesus most certainly would not have executed these men — nor anyone for that matter. Biden would do well to remember this fact during this Nativity season, which glorifies the birth two millennia ago of that Jewish pro-lifer who is the president’s professed savior.
Even St. Nicholas, the inspiration for Santa Claus, by all accounts appears to have been a death penalty abolitionist. The proverbial St. Nick assuredly would not have offered holiday gifts this year to the government officials in Indiana and Oklahoma who just a week before Christmas executed their respective residents, putting one to death on his very birthday in order to maximize the cruelty for him and his loved ones.
More than any other historical figure associated with the life and death of Jesus, Biden can learn the most this holiday season from the damning legacy of Pontius Pilate. Christian tradition infamously portrays Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea from 26-36 CE, as having “washed his hands” of the question of Jesus’ execution. Let there be no doubt, the murder of Jesus proceeded as a direct result of that head of state’s inaction.
I can respectfully disagree with many Christian friends about the necessity of Jesus’ killing as expiation for the sins of the world. This significant theological difference aside, I am quite certain that my Christian colleagues would not want posterity associating them with a figure the likes of Pontius Pilate. And yet Biden risks a similarly lethal mistake if he does not halt the three remaining preventable federal killings that are set to take place in the United States. Those lives rest on a razor’s edge — and Biden’s hands effectively hold the blade. May he not wash his hands of this vital responsibility and abrogate his duty to uphold this most basic of human rights.
It has often been argued that the use of the death penalty is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the moral decay of any modern civilization. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel himself unambiguously said of capital punishment: “death should never be the answer in a civilized society.” As the torch-bearers to Wiesel’s absolutist abolitionist stance, L’chaim members are keenly aware that by leaving open this veritable Pandora’s Box, Biden sends an open invitation for the man-made angel of death to enter whenever the time is ripe, setting a precedent that inherently devalues human life.
Some might assume that a Jewish group like L’chaim might make an exception for a murderous antisemite like the Tree of Life shooter. Those individuals would be manifestly wrong. To the blood-thin red-line of state murder, there are no exceptions. For Wiesel, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Nelly Sachs and other Jewish human rights activists in the wake of the Holocaust, this included their staunch opposition to Israel’s execution of Nazi perpetrator Adolph Eichmann.
For the thousands of Wiesel’s torchbearers at L’chaim — among whom many like myself are direct scions of Holocaust survivors and victims — it applies as well to Robert Bowers. Members of L’chaim know very well that the genocide of the Holocaust is not the same as the issue of capital punishment.
Members also realize that for “never again” to hold any real meaning, the world must learn from the lessons of that unparalleled conflagration. This includes saying “never again” to state-sponsored murder of defenseless prisoners, especially via the direct Nazi legacy that is lethal injection.
Trump’s federal government will almost certainly employ this aptly-named “Nazi needle” to kill the Tree of Life shooter and the two other human beings still facing execution. Such perpetuation of this Nazi legacy cannot be allowed to stand after the events of the 20th century. As Buber said of Israel’s decision to kill Eichmann, history will invariably label Biden’s moral failure with regard to Bowers and his two condemned peers as a “great mistake.”
It merits repeating that just as L’chaim never would deign to speak for murder victims or their loved ones, neither does it do so for those whose lives have been directly impacted by the Tree of Life massacre, nor should it. As a hospital chaplain, I regularly counsel mourners that those grieving should be allowed to feel the full gamut of human emotion, including rage, and even the desire for vengeance where applicable. Let no one ever judge anyone in such a position for harboring such feelings. If I myself were to lose a loved one to murder, I very well might find myself desiring — and perhaps even advocating — for the death of my loved one’s killer.
Any civilized society bears the responsibility of protecting and honoring all such traumatized and suffering mourners, while also upholding the fundamental human rights upon which this world strives to stand. The Talmudic sages were quick to remind the Jewish people that kol yisrael aravim zeh bazeh — all of Israel are responsible for one another. This includes supporting those in the community who are the most vulnerable, such as family members of murder victims, while maintaining foundational ethical norms, such as the right to life. Society must never lose sight of this vital balance.
Consequently, L’chaim members, like nearly all abolitionists, first and foremost remember and honor the victims and loved ones of individuals whose lives have been taken by violence. At the start of every multifaith execution vigil by Death Penalty Action, L’chaim lifts memorial prayers from the Jewish tradition for the victims of crimes that led the condemned to the death chamber.
Indeed, L’chaim has remembered the 11 Tree of Life victims frequently over the years in prayer and song. This held true when L’chaim was invited to speak at Dor Hadash, one of the three congregations attacked during the Tree of Life shooting. It also was the case during the sentencing phase of Bowers’ capital trial, when L’chaim members stood across the steps from the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the annual Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty and chanted the traditional Jewish memorial prayer of Eil Malei Rachamim for the 11 Tree of Life martyrs, of blessed memory.
L’chaim also has performed renditions of the song “Tree of Life” by Idina Menzel and Kate Diaz, which was written to memorialize victims for the 2022 HBO documentary “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting” And of course, L’chaim makes contributions in the loving memories of the Tree of Life victims, as well as advocating regularly and vociferously against antisemitism in all its heinous forms.
State killing of those who are already safely behind bars — whether of Robert Bowers or anyone else — is not a deterrence, but rather only perpetuates the cycle of violence and murder. May the victims at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life — Eitz Chaim in Hebrew — be honored not by the taking of another life, but instead by reaffirming the sanctity of life.
Rather than carrying out more killing, may this so-called civilized society follow the example of the inspiring Jewish residents of Pittsburgh. In a stunning example of that community’s unflagging steel resolve in the wake of the Tree of Life shooter’s capital trial, it hosted a life-affirming parade to celebrate the dedication of a new Torah — known also as an Eitz Chaim/Tree of Life — in loving memory of Joyce Fienberg, one of the 11 Tree of Life martyrs, and her late husband Dr. Steven Fienberg. That sacred community once again brought new life to the exhortation that has motivated Jewish people for millennia: “Am Yisrael Chai” — “The People of Israel Live!”
To that profound demonstration of the very best of Jewish values and resilience, L’chaim members fervently echo the reverberating response of Jewish abolitionists everywhere in asking President Biden to join the age-old Jewish charge, chanting: “L’chaim — to Life!” and to apply this wisdom without exception, from Jesus of Nazareth to Robert Bowers.
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