I’m a rabbi who survived the Pittsburgh synagogue attack. Killing the shooter won’t bring my slain congregants back
Mourners visit the memorial outside the Tree of Life Synagogue on October 31, 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where eleven Jews were killed in a mass shooting. Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Who benefits from vengeance?
This summer, this question has weighed heavily on my mind.
I survived the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that took the lives of 11 fellow worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue and injured six others, including four police officers. Today a jury in federal court condemned the shooter to death.
For more years than I would like to count, a protracted legal process to hold the shooter accountable has been playing out in my fractured Pittsburgh community. Vengeance has become a motivating factor for many Jews who hoped the jury would sentence the murderer to death. But despite the horrific nature of his crimes, I do not believe that doing so would bring either justice or peace.
What will bring justice?
Many Americans have come to feel that vengeance is a right. But what are the emotional and spiritual impacts of exacting retribution?
Despite the fact that a wholly non-Jewish jury has sentenced the murderer, Jews have a responsibility to examine what the Jewish sources say about vengeance and revenge.
It doesn’t help that the Jewish legal tradition holds mixed messages. “Vengeance and Retribution are mine,” God thunders at the end of the Torah (Deuteronomy 32:35).
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge,” Moses teaches midway through the book of Leviticus (19:18).
And yet, we are also commanded to “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites” (Numbers 31:2). “If a man kills the soul of a man,” the Torah teaches, “he shall be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17).
But there is no holy way to “get even” for a life lost. And enacting the death penalty does something to the souls of those who do so.
This could explain why sages Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon said that “If we had been members of the Sanhedrin (the ancient Jewish court), we would have conducted trials in a manner whereby no person would have even been executed.” Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya added that a Sanhedrin that executes a transgressor even once in 70 years has “blood on its hands.” (Mishnah Makkot 1:10).
The 14th-century medieval text called Sefer HaChinuch adds that “not being vengeful is a weighty thing,” and that a case involving a purported murder requires “the greatest precision.”
We must judge everyone with a rational mind and not a vengeful mind.
We are taught that we are culpable in destroying a world when we kill someone. Maimonides may have had this in mind when he wrote that vengeance and retribution are as irrational as murder itself.
Does vengeance taste good to those of us who have been left behind? Does it bring consolation to a spouse, child, sibling, friend or a community? Vengeance will not bring back the holy martyrs who were killed. We will still miss them, mourn them, and we are devastated by their absence.
A standard of Jewish belief regarding martyrs is that their spiritual presence remains on Earth, and that we should take comfort that their pure and holy rest in paradise with the Holy One.
Perhaps this is what is meant by “the ever Present One will avenge their deaths,” which is engraved on the grave markers of every Jewish martyr. God — not us — will see to it that the murderer is condemned.
A path forward
This time has been incredibly painful. But we must go beyond our natural human desire to exact revenge. Revenge will not bring our slain loved ones back to life. And seeking it may even hurt ourselves and extend our sadness.
Over the years, I have met numerous people who were extremely angry at other people, and prepared to do whatever was necessary to take revenge. One woman who was my star pupil for conversion, emailed me mere months after her wedding that she had discovered her new Jewish husband (who had insisted on her conversion before marriage) had been cheating on her. She not only angrily cut ties with her husband, but viciously renounced her new Jewish identity: selling all of her conversion books on E-bay and dropping off her ketubah at my office. She told me she burned with rage, and needed to erase him from her life.
But while the idea of taking back agency and acting on our pain may thrill us, vengeance does not work that way in real life.
During the Pittsburgh trial, my emotions and judgment have been all over the place. I have tried to redirect.
I have increased the amount of Torah learning and teaching within our synagogue. I have reached out to other rabbis and recruited them to study Jewish texts together on a weekly basis.
I’ve tried to embrace levity, too. Following the lead of Norman Cousins — a journalist who purportedly healed himself from a serious connective tissue disease with laughter — I made my personal list of 30 movies that make me laugh out loud with each subsequent viewing. I created a lecture series for our synagogue celebrating local Jewish celebrities like Barney Dreyfus, who invented the World Series.
I’ve found joy in the many landmarks that keep Pittsburgh weird, from the Church Brewery Works to Bicycle Heaven to tchotchke museums featuring grotesque and nostalgic collections, such as St. Anthony’s largest collection of relics in the world and Pee-wee Herman’s bicycle.
I don’t dwell on the morbidity of what a monster destroyed in 30 minutes at my synagogue one morning. I aim to redirect myself away from ugly feelings that Torah seeks to curb. And I try to honor the dead, finding comfort that they are under the wings of God’s eternal presence.
Vengeance does not have to take power over us. We need to grieve together from the terrible wounds that this trial has re-opened. But let us find consolation in re-directing ourselves through continued holy living.
To contact the author, email [email protected].
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