Judaism Step-by-step

Conflict 3 -

Crime and Punishment

A rabbi who visited our school scoffed at the Christian concept of forgiveness. He was talking about a church full of people who had been slaughtered and the church boarded up - a Christian minister had said that he forgave the people who had done this. "It is not up to him to forgive - that is for God alone. God does not ignore sin - he will punish those who break his laws." In fact, Judaism supports the idea that only the victim can offer forgiveness, and this cannot be done on their behalf if they are dead.

It seemed sensible - if you're going to have laws, there needs to be some sort of punishment for not keeping to them. Jews believe that some of God's laws (the Noachide laws) should be followed by everyone. In the Torah, Judges were appointed to ensure that rules were kept to and that those who broke the law were punished fairly.

God is a God of justice, but also of mercy. The process of repentance that begins on Rosh Hashanah and culminates on Yom Kippur allows Jews to show that they are truly sorry for what they have done and repent This is called teshuva - it includes trying to put right what you have done wrong and make amends with people you have hurt. This process of repentance and making up for what you have done wrong is called atonement, so Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. On Rosh Hashanah, to show that you want to get rid of your sins, you symbolically throw them away by throwing crumbs to fish that eat them and carry them away.

Capital Punishment has always been controversial. It was only ever allowed if there was more than one witness to the crime (Deuteronomy 17:6). If a Beth Din (collection of rabbis acting as judges) was unanimous in its conviction of a criminal with no one speaking up for the accused, the accused would apparently have been released - this teaching shows that every attempt had to be made to find out if someone was innocent.

In Israel, the death sentence is now only used against those found guilty of treason or Genocide. The last time this was used was on Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal, in 1962.

There is nothing on the revision sites about this topic, it has never come up in the exam and it has been removed from the 2001-2003 syllabus. However, if you have the time:

aish.com has articles on Reward and Punishment and Crime and Punishment
The Revision Site has pages on Punishment and Capital Punishment from a Christian point of view - don't learn the quotes but think about the issues!

Try the following:

(a) Describe and explain Jewish beliefs about crime and punishment [8]

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