Rabbi takes part in ‘wrenching’ state talks on death penalty

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

As the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission formally began its work on Wednesday, July 19, among the 13 participants was Rabbi Robert Scheinberg, leader of the United Synagogue of Hoboken. Scheinberg was among five members appointed to the panel by Gov. Jon Corzine.

“This is an issue I’ve been interested in for a long time,” said Scheinberg in a telephone interview. He has studied the issue on his own, particularly as it relates to Jewish law, and has served on several panels debating the issue from a religious perspective. Still, he said, he was surprised to have been appointed. “I knew my name was being considered, but I thought it was a long shot. This is a very special honor for me.”

Created earlier this year by the NJ Legislature, the panel is charged with determining whether the death penalty serves a legitimate purpose and whether there are alternatives that would achieve the same purported aims as the death penalty. Although the state has not put anyone to death in 43 years, even after reimposing its death penalty statute in 1982 after a decade-long ban, death penalty foes successfully argued that the death penalty is both flawed and expensive. The state declared a moratorium on executions until 60 days after the panel completes its work.

The panel includes clergy, crime victims’ advocates, prosecutors, a defense attorney, a former justice of the NJ Supreme Court, state Attorney General Zulima Farber, and former state Sen. John Russo.

The panel is exploring a variety of issues, some moral, some technical, and some economic. They include the comparative costs of the death penalty and life sentences, whether the death penalty is applied in a fair or discriminatory manner, and whether the risks of making a mistake outweigh the deterrent and punitive functions of the death penalty.

While others shy away from hot-button issues like the death penalty, Scheinberg embraces them. “One of the things I especially like about being a rabbi is that those issues that are at the nexus of religion and politics — that you are not supposed to discuss in polite company — I get to take on all the time, study, and discuss. They are among the most wrenching and most significant decisions that a society has to make.”

The Torah prescribes the death penalty for certain crimes; still, in eras when the Jewish Sanhedrin held jurisdiction, it was considered an extreme punishment, meted out rarely (but not never). The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly opposes the death penalty, saying the tradition finds it repugnant and that experience shows it to be ineffective in deterring crime and ripe with the possibility for error.

Scheinberg, a Conservative rabbi, declined to comment on the proceedings or his own assessment of the death penalty. “My responsibility is to challenge myself in this work and to give an honest hearing to all the evidence, to question the assumptions I have held before, and, together with the commission, to come to the most unbiased conclusion I can come to,” he said.

Currently, there are nine people on death row in New Jersey.