The pews were full at a Shabbat service at the Sixth & I synagogue in Washington in November 2018, held in memory of the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Over the nearly five years since 11 people were murdered in a Pittsburgh synagogue, the deadliest antisemitic attack in the country’s history, the question of justice has loomed, unresolved. Soon, the jury in the federal trial will make a decision that is central to that question of justice: whether Robert Bowers, the man who carried out the attack, should be condemned to death. Talmudic jurisprudence is strongly averse to the death penalty, Rabbi Kalmanofsky said, but Jewish citizens should understand that this is ultimately a decision in the hands of a secular justice system. And while rabbinical tradition holds that the death penalty should be extremely rare, he said, it acknowledges “that sometimes there are incredibly exigent circumstances.”

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Persons: Robert Bowers, Jonathan Perlman, ” Miri Rabinowitz, Jerry Rabinowitz, Jeremy Kalmanofsky, Rabbi Kalmanofsky, ” Organizations: The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, New, U.S, Attorney, Conservative Locations: Washington, Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh