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Jewish Leaders & Community Members Say NO to Nitrogen Hypoxia/Gas Chamber in State Executions

Legislators & Governors in states with proposed* or enacted legislation to allow executions by gas suffocation. (As of Feb 11, 2024, this includes Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio and Oklahoma)

Add your name to say NO to smothering prisoners with gas.

[See operative petition language below. If you are NOT a Jewish clergy member, community leader or part of a Jewish community, please click here to sign the general #NoGasChamber petition.]

As of April 8, 2024, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma have laws allowing the use nitrogen gas for executions, and Arizona allows Cyanide gas (Zyklon B). More states are looking at adopting the method, including Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio and possibly others. This petition is set up to gather the signatures of Jewish clergy and community leaders without geographical limitations. When we present signatures to policy makers, we will sort the names to put those from the particular state at the top, and add all others below.

If you are NOT a Jewish clergy member, community leader or part of a Jewish community, please click here.

More background is on our general "No Gas Chamber" petition for everyone. Please also see Death Penalty Action's Jewish resources.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact Cantor Mike Zoosman and/or Abraham Bonowitz, co-founders of L'Chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty at info@deathpenaltyaction.org.

JEWISH COMMUNITY STATEMENT OPPOSING EXECUTIONS BY GAS ASPHYXIATION

NOTE: This statement may be edited for clarity or to add additional information.

Sponsored by

Death Penalty Action

To: Legislators & Governors in states with proposed* or enacted legislation to allow executions by gas suffocation. (As of Feb 11, 2024, this includes Alabama, Arizona, Kansas*, Louisiana*, Mississippi, Nebraska*, Ohio* and Oklahoma)
From: [Your Name]

Jewish tradition presents somewhat contradictory statements regarding the death penalty. While the Torah permits the death penalty, the Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin, imposes severe limits on capital punishment even where the crime is murder. Contemporary US law does not meet the standards for fairness and accuracy as articulated in Jewish law. Today we are writing not about the death penalty as a whole, but about proposed forms of execution.

Certainly there are members of Jewish communities who support the death penalty in concept or in practice. However, we stand united in opposition to the introduction of the gas suffocation as a form of execution in [STATE]. We do not suggest comparisons to the atrocities of Nazi Germany under which millions of our relatives were murdered, many by suffocation in sealed chambers. Still, we cannot imagine it possible that Jewish communities anywhere could stand by while prisoners are executed in our names, using any variation of that mechanism.

Therefore, the undersigned Rabbis, Cantors and other leaders and members of the Jewish community call on you to reject the conduct of executions by suffocation using a mask or in any sort of gas chamber in your state.