Article after article, op-ed after op-ed tells us that the Jewish community is torn, that the Torah and the Jewish tradition and the rabbis can't all agree. Which is a problem if you're looking for a authority. Me, I'm just a capital defense lawyer with a blawg who hasn't written much in recent years.
* * * * *
Folks who know me, as well as those who don't but have read this blawg even occasionally, know I am an abolitionist. An opponent of the death penalty.
Also I am Jewish by birth and was raised Jewish. I'm an atheist, but still.
I lived in Pittsburgh for five years. I went to college there. I lived in Squirrel Hill where the Tree of Life synagogue is located. I have family and good friends there. I visit fairly often. I was there recently, drove past Tree of Life. One night I had dinner at a friend's home. He's Jewish, lives around the corner from Tree of Life, walks past it every day, has friends who worship there, feels the trauma.
Those things may be relevant.
So Robert Bowers. Killer. Anti-semite. Apparently unrepentent.
An article, I think in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, quoted a Pittsburgher, possibly a survivor of the shootings at Tree of Life, but possibly just someone from the community (I didn't save the article, and it was a few weeks ago), said "I oppose the death penalty absolutely in all circumstances" except for Robert Bowers." Which I pretty much understand. Because as Stalin is reputed to have said,
The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
And when it's personal. . . . You know, it's what Michael Dukakis got wrong.
when he should have said
I'd want to tear that person limb from limb, but . . . .
The other day, family was in town and my brother-in-law, asked what I thought about the the death sentence Bowers got, said that he read someone who said something like,
You can't forgive someone who doesn't ask for forgiveness and show remorse.
And so I quoted the Stalin line and referenced Dukakis and added that forgiveness was really beside the point.
I said that there were all sorts of good policy reasons to oppose the death penalty. I talked of slippery slopes and how why not Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot - and then maybe Robert Bowers and then maybe the next guy, because just how awful and evil is awful or evil enough. But I told the truth, which is that there are probably folks who deserve killing, and we can argue about who they are, but that's the quibble not the answer. *
So what I said, finally, is what I've said before in this blawg, which is that in some circles I'm recognized as an atheist who believes deeply in mercy and grace. And that they aren't about whether they're deserved. They're about us, who give it (or don't).
That it's not whether Robert Bowers deserves killing but about whether we deserve to kill him.
Nobody mentioned that line about him who is without sin. But the atheist was reminded that he sounded very Christian.
Amen.
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*The story, attributed to most every wag of the 20th Century; I like to think it was George Bernard Shaw:
"Madame," Shaw said to the elegant matron, "would you sleep with me for a million pounds?"
"I suppose so," she replied.
"Then, would you sleep with me for 10 pounds?"
"Certainly not. What sort of woman do you think I am?"
"We've established that," Shaw answered. "Now we're haggling over the price."
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