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These Jews backed Brad Lander in the primary. Are they taking his advice and voting Mamdani?
For progressive Jews in New York City, the presence on the ballot of one of their own in June’s mayoral primary offered a moment of great excitement.
Brad Lander galvanized many progressive Jewish leaders, and polls found that he outperformed among Jewish voters, drawing about 20% of their first-choice votes on the ranked ballots, compared to 11% of voters citywide.
Lander cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the primary winner, before that vote, and he has since campaigned heavily for the democratic socialist who is leading in all polls. So it might seem self-evident that his Jewish voters would all be backing Mamdani without hesitation. But some of them say they are doing so with misgivings or not doing so at all, in a sign of how fraught the election has been for Jewish voters who are turned off by Mamdani’s strong opposition to Israel.
Jonathan Marcus, a 25-year-old Jewish voter in Manhattan, ranked Lander first in the primary but is casting his vote in the general election for Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who is polling second.
“Someone like Mamdani becoming mayor is, while he won’t explicitly outright say ‘from the river to the sea’ or anything like that, to me, it just enables these protesters,” said Marcus. “For someone who’s going to take their side, being the leader of New York, and it looks like it’s going to happen, I can’t get behind that.”
Richard Goldstein, on the other hand, said he’ll be casting his ballot for Mamdani after ranking Lander first in the primary and leaving Mamdani off. The Jewish former executive editor of the Village Voice, who lives in Greenwich Village, said he had been turned off by Mamdani’s stances on Israel, which he said would be “a recipe for a bloodbath” in the Middle East if fully acted upon.
Because of ranked-choice voting in the primary, “I thought if I put him on the ballot at all, I may end up voting for him, so I left him off,” Goldstein said.
But in the general election, he has decided to give Mamdani his support, after ruling out Cuomo as “truly sleazy” and Republican Curtis Sliwa as “completely inappropriate.” He said he supported most of what Mamdani stands for and believed that Mamdani would not sanction a flourishing of antisemitism, though he said he expected him potentially not to intervene in “radical protests” against Israel.
“This is one of the hardest choices I’ve had to make,” Goldstein said. “I like his program very much. I admire his character. He’s incredibly intelligent and energetic, almost frenetically energetic, which is great in a politician. On the other hand, I really don’t agree with him on Israel. I’m not a Zionist either, I just want Israel to survive.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs also openly backed Lander in the primary without offering similar support for Mamdani. While she declined to offer more details about her personal vote, last week she urged her followers for the first time to take Mamdani seriously, in the face of a groundswell of opposition from rabbis around the country.
“Was Mamdani my favorite candidate? No (I think everyone knows that was Brad Lander),” wrote Jacobs, the CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, in a Facebook post, adding that she was unconvinced that Mamdani, who is 34 and lacks executive experience, could “run a huge, complicated city.”
But she said she believed there was evidence that Mamdani had learned from engaging with Jewish leaders who spoke with him and that she believed the thrust of Mamdani’s campaign, which has centered on affordability, was resonant with New Yorkers.
“Do I think most New Yorkers voted for Mamdani because they wake up every morning thinking about Israel/Palestine?” wrote Jacobs. “No, most New Yorkers wake up thinking about how to pay their rent and take care of their kids and get to work — which is exactly what he ran on and what people responded.”
Back in June, voters who preferred Lander did not all choose to back Mamdani at the same time, despite the candidates’ cross-endorsement. A New York Times analysis found that, after Lander was eliminated during ranked-choice voting, 56% of his first-choice votes were allocated to Mamdani, meaning that they had ranked Mamdani higher than Cuomo or not at all.
But in a surprise, despite Lander’s cross-endorsement of Mamdani, half of his remaining votes were allocated to Cuomo, while the rest of the ballots had not ranked Cuomo or Mamdani and were discarded.
New York mayoral candidate, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani is joined by fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025 in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Since then, Lander himself says he has been working to convince voters who ranked him first in June to come around to Mamdani if they weren’t already there.
“I talked to some people who in the primary ranked me first and Zohran fifth,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency during a Met Council food distribution event over the summer. “With them, I’ve been asking, OK, he’s been going around to listen to a lot of people to try to allay people’s concerns and fears, what do you want to hear and see that will help you feel more comfortable?”
Andrea Scheer is one of those voters. When it came time to vote in the Democratic mayoral primary this past June, she didn’t hesitate before ranking Lander first. The 76-year-old psychotherapist had already done some leafleting and tabling for him, and she is on the leadership committee of the Upper West Side Action Group, a progressive political group that endorsed Lander ahead of the primary.
She also recalls ranking City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and State Sen. Zellnor Myrie. Her fourth and last-place ranked-choice vote went to Mamdani, who’d emerged as the likeliest candidate to take on Cuomo — a politician for whom Scheer said she has “no respect.”
“I had to put Mamdani somewhere,” Scheer said in an interview, in order to vote against Cuomo.
But the decision was one Scheer felt uneasy about because of Mamdani’s views on Israel. She cited Mamdani’s past refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” though she acknowledged that he said since that he would discourage its use. She has worries about his support for the movement to boycott Israel and how that could manifest under his leadership. And she also brought up Mamdani’s vow to have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli prime minister sets foot in New York City while he is mayor.
“Not that he’s one of my favorite people — he’s not, at all,” Scheer said about Netayahu. “But you’re going to arrest him? Again, different standards for Israel.”
But now, with Mamdani being the only progressive candidate in an election that’s just days away, Scheer said she must face that uneasiness head on. Given the field of candidates, Scheer said she is coming around on voting for Mamdani.
“I’m 90% there to vote for him,” Scheer said. “Because if I don’t vote for him I’m not voting. And it is absolutely against my DNA to not vote.”
Scheer said she is banking on Mamdani’s ability to grow. “I heard that he was going around to synagogues and talking to rabbis and, I’m sort of counting on him being smart enough to learn,” she said.
Arlene Geiger, the founder and coordinator of the UWS Action Group, estimated that upwards of 90% of group members are voting for Mamdani — but with varying levels of enthusiasm. Geiger, who is Jewish and said about 60% of people involved with her group are, too. She said an event in September where Lander addressed group members’ concerns about Mamdani had made a difference.
“I would say people were impressed with — I mean they love Brad — but I think that for those who were apprehensive, it made them feel better about Zohran,” Geiger said.
“Quite a few people came up afterwards and said, ‘I was on the fence but now I’m voting for Zohran,’” Lander said following an unrelated event later that week. “I’ve certainly had people say to me, ‘I’m not persuaded by you, but I appreciate your taking the time to have this conversation.’ And of course I’ve had people who call me a lot of ugly names, and I don’t reciprocate.”
Scheer said she wasn’t totally won over by attending. She left feeling that Lander had answered questions “a little bit generically,” like by repeating that Mamdani wants all New Yorkers to feel safe, and decided that she would not join others in tabling for Mamdani. But she concluded that she would feel comfortable voting for Mamdani again.
“The fact that he has Brad Lander as his buddy, I think would be helpful when it came to certain issues with Jews and Israel,” she said.
For Hillel Hirshbein, a 56-year old Jewish Harlem resident who identifies as a liberal and a Zionist and who ranked Lander first, Mamdani’s statements about Israel had been a deterrent going into the primary.
“I thought Mamdani’s policies, there were quite a few of them that were good. I thought that he was a much stronger presenter of a vision than some other candidates,” said Hirshbein. “But going into the primary, I had sort of a grave concern about things that he had been recorded saying that were somewhat anti-Israel and anti-Zionist.”
Ultimately, Hirshbein’s opposition to Cuomo made him rank Mamdani last in the primary election despite his “reluctance” to vote for a candidate who opposes Israel.
“I did, with reluctance, add him as my last candidate, because I sort of in my head, ended up ranking this decent guy who has integrity, but with whom I have a significant disagreement, above the guy who I don’t trust, and I think is just a corrupt sleazebag,” said Hirshbein.
Four months later, the career social worker said he had come around to Mamdani more enthusiastically because of what he says he will offer to “help folks that are on the margins.”
“I’m voting for him because of what I think he can do for the city, and setting aside the stuff that I think is rather is really anathema to me from his foreign policy perspectives,” said Hirshbein.
For some Jewish New Yorkers, that leap is proving too hard to make. Polls show that Mamdani is poised for victory next week and may command a majority of votes in a three-way race, even as Cuomo surges near the finish line. But the most recent poll of Jewish voters, from Quinnipiac University, found that 60% backed Cuomo, while just 16% said they favored Mamdani and 12% supported Sliwa.
Ultimately, while Lander said he recognized lingering concerns about Mamdani among New York’s progressive Jews, he still believed the frontrunner would do well among his voters in the general election.
“Obviously, there are some people in the community, in the Jewish community, who aren’t yet comfortable with him,” he said at the Met Council event. “But I believe he’s going to do very well in general, with people who voted for me first, and also with Jewish New Yorkers.”
For at least some of them, their ballots will come with a hefty dose of hope — that their best-case scenario will unfold and their biggest fears will not materialize.
“You can’t cross your fingers in the Star of David, but you know, I’ll hope for the best, I’ll wish him the best,” said Goldstein. Using the Yiddish or Hebrew term for common sense, he continued, “I hope he has the sechel to keep the city intact and growing and to promote his program without sparking ethnic strife.”
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Mamdani joins Theo Von’s podcast. They find common ground in criticizing Netanyahu.
(JTA) — New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani appeared for an interview with “manosphere” podcaster Theo Von, during which he called for the United States to join the International Criminal Court and enforce its arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“If I had my say, the U.S. government would have joined the ICC, honored every single warrant that they issued,” Mamdani said near the end of the 75-minute interview that was posted on Thursday.
“F–k yeah,” Von replied.
The interview came one week after Netanyahu visited the United Nations and delivered a speech during which he called Mamdani an “antisemite” and a supporter of Hamas. (Mamdani has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization.)
Von, meanwhile, is part of a growing ecosystem of everyman “manosphere” podcasters who host sprawling conversations with a wide array of famous guests — he has hosted Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, JD Vance and Mark Zuckerberg — and increasingly are seen as representing a crucial sector of the electorate. He drew an invite to Trump’s inauguration in 2025 after hosting him on the campaign trail the year before.
Since then, Von has become increasingly critical of Israel and pressed the case in his Vance interview that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice, which is separate from the ICC, is adjudicating charges Israel committed genocide — which the country rejects — but has not issued a ruling. Von has also hosted guests who have spread conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews.
At the end of his interview with Mamdani, Von thanked the New York mayor for “talking a little bit about the genocide” during their podcast, noting that “a lot of people are afraid to speak about it in politics.”
“One thing I would just say is, your curiosity is a beautiful thing,” Mamdani told Von.
The chummy conversation was notable, arising as it did out of a meeting between an icon of the libertarian-leaning “manosphere” and a self-declared socialist.
Mamdani decried Israel’s campaign in Gaza during their conversation.
“People talk about a ceasefire — just last week, the Israeli military killed an 11-year-old boy, Palestinian boy in Gaza, in a section that’s considered to be a safe zone,” he said. “This is continuing.”
He also recalled hosting Palestinian families at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, where they told him about “the ways that their lives have been shattered.”
Von asked Mamdani how he keeps people “from misdirecting energy that’s against Israel towards their Jewish friends,” especially as the mayor of the country’s most Jewish city.
Part of that, Mamdani said, is being clear that “no Jewish person in New York City is responsible for the actions of the State of Israel. And if you want to hold anybody accountable, it’s the people who are making those decisions — the prime minister, the State of Israel, also our complicity as American taxpayers knowing how many billions of dollars we have sent in bombs and continue to send.”
Mamdani also pointed to his administration’s official strategy to combat antisemitism, which it released earlier this week, as an effort to both condemn and prevent antisemitism. Some groups said the strategy “failed to address” anti-Israel rhetoric and links between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, while applauding aspects like security funding boosts and Holocaust education expansion.
Finally, he added, it takes “being very clear that critique of the State of Israel, the policy actions, the genocide — that in and of itself is not being antisemitic.”
“Yeah, I agree, speak up about it,” Von said.
Von, who has nearly 700 podcast episodes and more than 4.7 million YouTube subscribers, has interviewed or spoken positively about multiple controversial figures who have spread conspiracy theories about Israel and Jews, including former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, streamer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and commentator Candace Owens.
During an episode from this past January with comedian Dave Smith, Von called Fuentes “fascinating” and said, “He’s f–ing brave, dude.”
Von hosted Carlson on his show in December 2025. The two men spoke at length about Israel and Von criticized what he said was a lack of transparency in the control that Israel and corporate interests have over American politics.
“If they would just say, ‘Hey, America is a country that’s owned by Israel,’ or that it’s always been this outpost or this LLC of Israel — or maybe not even of Israel, it could just be of corporate entities, I’m not really sure exactly — but if they would just tell us, you can operate from a place of knowing what’s going on,” Von said.
Pro-Israel lobbies have repeatedly defended their role as no different than any other interest group seeking influence, citing the successes over the years of pro-choice and anti-abortion groups, environmental groups and gun owner groups, among others.
During that interview, Von also played a clip of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss calling Carlson anti-American and anti-Jewish, which elicited laughter from both Von and Carlson. Von then read out an AI-generated overview that described Weiss as “a vocal supporter of Israel.”
“If her allegiance isn’t to America first, how is she the head of an American network?” Von said.
“Well that’s of course an entirely fair question, that you’re not allowed to ask,” Carlson replied.
Von’s conversation with Mamdani this week covered a number of topics including socialism, the achievability of the American Dream and their preferred fish.
When asked about Netanyahu’s U.N. speech, Mamdani explained that he’d been meeting with the prime minister of the Netherlands about an LGBTQ center and the community’s history in New York.
“Then I get back from that meeting and it’s like, ‘Oh by the way, here’s what he was saying at the U.N.’,” Mamdani said.
“It’s so bizarre. Did it feel personal then?” Von asked.
Mamdani replied that “all of this is an attempt to distract from responsibility, name as many people as possible, try and make it into a back and forth.”
He added, “It’s not about me and him. It’s about the fact that he’s the architect of a genocide.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Mamdani joins Theo Von’s podcast. They find common ground in criticizing Netanyahu. appeared first on The Forward.
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A Jewish journalist recorded pro-Palestinian protesters outside services. He was reportedly suspended from his job
(JTA) — TORONTO – A number of Canadian groups are demanding answers in the wake of media reports that the country’s national broadcaster suspended a Jewish reporter after he posted a video of pro-Palestinian protesters outside Yom Kippur services and wrote about his pained reaction.
The reported suspension came after Neil Herland shared footage of protesters gathered outside the Meridian Arts Centre in north Toronto, which on Sept. 20 was hosting Yom Kippur services for The Song Shul.
Herland, who has worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for nearly 30 years, began his post on X, “On Yom Kippur I went to a synagogue service in Toronto and was met by protesters trying to taunt and intimidate me from entering the building.”
A man can be heard yelling “Zionist alert!” through a megaphone, while another masked protester approaches the camera and screams, “You’re going to hell.”
A pro-Palestinian group, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, filed a complaint against Herland with the CBC, saying he had mischaracterized the protest.
“It is clear to CJPME that Mr. Herland was aiding the pro-Israel side of these demonstrations defending Mark Regev’s presence, while smearing these pro-Palestine protesters as antisemitic for their criticisms of Regev’s awful record on Palestinian human rights,” their complaint said, referring to the presence of a former Israeli diplomat at the event.
The Toronto Sun reported the suspension on Sept. 24. CBC declined to confirm the suspension and said reporting had mischaracterized what had happened.
“We don’t comment on internal matters,” a spokesperson said. “That said, we are aware of reporting on this matter which has errors and mischaracterizations but we can’t get into the specifics given the confidentiality of the situation.”
Reached by JTA, Herland declined a request for comment.
A press freedom group decried the reported suspension, however.
“Recording events in a public place and reporting them to the public is not misconduct,” Sheila Gunn Reid, president of the Independent Press Gallery — a non-profit advocating for independent and nongovernmental journalist organizations — said. “It is journalism. It is not the role of a public broadcaster to punish its journalists for doing their jobs to appease activist groups. Its role is to defend their right to report.”
In a thread under his tweet about the protest, Herland noted that “The guest speaker at the Toronto synagogue tonight was an Australian-born university teacher who lives in Israel and once served as Israeli ambassador to the UK. His speech was about making peace in the Middle East. Let’s hope that happens this year.”
He was referring to Regev, formerly the Israeli ambassador to Britain, who gave a talk during Yom Kippur services. Online defenders of the protesters chided Herland for not personally naming the prominent media defender of Israel’s war in Gaza in his post.
Commenters also scored Herland for describing the venue as a synagogue even though the service was held in a public events space.
However, Jewish groups who reviewed the video or otherwise tracked the protest said that Regev’s presence did not seem germane to the protesters’ chants, and noted that synagogues often move to event venues for the High Holidays because of the volume of congregants attending.
“The protesters claimed to have been demonstrating against the speaker, but I don’t recall seeing anything that particularly said they were targeting [Regev],” Rochelle Direnfeld, senior criminal counsel for the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, said in an interview. “It seemed to be much more general against Jews and supporters of Israel.”
Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic, Direnfeld said, but the protesters’ apparent targeting of worshipers was worrying. “It’s not okay to blame Canadian Jews for what’s going on in the Middle East,” Direnfeld said. “Given what [the protesters] were saying to the people trying to enter the building for services, that’s what they were doing.”
Simon Wolle, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, said the protests on Judaism’s holiest day amounted to intimidation. “It is deplorable that members of the Jewish community are subject to these incessant acts of hatred and intimidation,” he said. “It is especially alarming when these protesters target members of the community as they enter their houses of worship, in this instance on Kol Nidre, the holiest night of the year.”
Wolle said the CBC needed to explain its reported disciplinary measures. “Neil Herland had every right to document his lived experience, and the very idea that he would face disciplinary action for that is deeply concerning,” he said. “As Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC owes the public an explanation for its inexplicable treatment of Mr. Herland.”
Vivian Bercovici, a lawyer as well as former ambassador of Canada to Israel and a CBC board member, said the alleged discipline Herland has faced is cause for concern.
“Herland didn’t say anything derogatory, rude or inappropriate,” said Bercovici. “He told us what was happening in a very clear and factual way, and so I think that the CBC owes us an explanation as to why that post was so egregious.”
Herland’s tweet thread also included a post noting that his late father was an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust in Romania, and that he “came to Canada as a refugee. This year I got an Austrian passport, in case Canada becomes unsafe for me as a Jew. I fear that moment is approaching, here in Canada and elsewhere.”
Herland’s expression of his own distress at the alleged harassment is not usual practice for reporters, but it is also not unheard of.
His comments echo those of many Canadian Jews, who increasingly are saying they do not feel safe in the country and even considering taking up potential offers to move to the United States as refugees.
Direnfeld said the incident reflected what is becoming a pervasive complaint among Canadian Jews that the authorities are not doing enough to decrease tensions. The police practice of deescalation was failing, she said.
“De-escalation can quickly turn into capitulation, which only serves to embolden these protesters to continue,” she said. “We’re now seeing the fruits of that capitulation in conduct such as what happened in Belleville,” she continued, referring to a gunman who tried to attack the Sons of Jacob synagogue on Yom Kippur but was killed in a shootout with police.
Bercovici said the protest was no less distressing because the Meridian Arts Centre is an events space.
“A synagogue can be anywhere, and there are a lot of religious groups that rent space over specific holidays because they don’t have their own building,” she said. “That’s just a fatuous, ridiculous argument.”
Herland has posted only once to X since his reported suspension: A photo of Shabbat candles on Friday, Sept. 25.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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A great Jewish intellectual understood the Kafkaesque horror of Tennessee’s botched execution
Two days ago, the state of Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike, the Death Row prisoner who, in 1995, was found guilty of the torture and murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer. After spending more than 30 years on death row, Pike was strapped to a prison gurney and, as journalists watched through a window, an execution team cycled through at least a half-dozen syringes before finding a vein suitable for the injection of pentobarbital.
Or so they thought.
After Pike herself tried to help the team find a vein, they injected her with a supposedly lethal dose of the barbiturate. Though it caused an intense burning sensation in Pike’s arm, the dose failed to do its job, leading the executioners to empty a second dose into what they thought was a vein but turned out to be the surrounding tissue. Shortly thereafter, a curtain was drawn across the window and, for an hour, the journalists heard Pike continue to breathe and snore. Pike’s legal team eventually learned that their client, barely but still stubbornly alive, had been rushed to the emergency room of a nearby hospital.
While Pike’s physical prognosis is uncertain, there is nothing uncertain about the ethical diagnosis of this event. At least this would be the case for two earlier journalists who wrote at length on the death penalty: Arthur Koestler and Albert Camus. Long after they both became celebrated novelists and intellectuals, the two men each wrote essays on state-sanctioned killing, which were combined and published in France with the title Réflexions sur la peine capitale, or Reflections on the Death Penalty.
These reflections are as relevant in our own age of drug-induced executions as in Koestler and Camus’ era of where the delivery system of death was a noose or the guillotine.
Born into a secular Jewish family in Budapest, Koestler was, as the phrase goes, a child of his century, one convulsed by catastrophic wars, murderous ideologies, and multiple genocides. Described by his friend George Orwell as an “outstanding figure” of his time, Koestler, like Orwell, fought in and reported on the Spanish Civil War. As a member of the Spanish republican forces, he was captured by Franco’s intelligence service and sentenced to death — a fate Koestler escaped when, after several months of imprisonment, he was released in a prisoner exchange.
Yet this experience deeply marked him. In the mid-1950s, he rallied to the campaign to end capital punishment in Great Britain, penning the essay “Reflections on Hanging.” Serialized in two newspapers, the essay galvanized public opinion and played a pivotal role in the parliamentary vote that, while not entirely abolishing the death penalty, severely limited it. Given the clarity and ferocity of Koestler’s writing — which, Rebecca West observed, was as historically misleading as it was rhetorically moving — this sea change in the public’s attitude and parliament’s position is not surprising.
One passage seems especially relevant for the recent events in Tennessee. “There is indeed a Kafkaesque horror attached to an execution,” Koestler writes, “which goes beyond the mere fear of death or pain or indignity. It is connected not with the brutality but with the macabre, cold-blooded politeness of the ceremony, in which the person whose neck is going to be broken is supposed to collaborate in a nice, sensible manner, as if it were a matter of a minor surgical operation…it is present in the delinquent’s knowledge that in the embarrassed stares of the officials he is already mirrored as a dead man with a blue face and ruptured vertebrae; and that what for him is the final, violent termination of life is for them merely an unpleasant duty, followed by a sigh of relief and a plate of bacon and eggs.”
Did the unnamed doctor, I wonder, stare with embarrassment as he repeatedly tried but failed at killing the — perhaps this is not the best word — patient? How, I also wonder, should readers respond to the description of Pike’s attempted execution? (With embarrassment, I admit while I was revulsed, I also continued sipping from a mug of coffee as I read the New York Times’ account.)
We can guess how Lucien Camus might have responded. His son, Albert Camus, told and retold the story in his writings of his father who, having witnessed a public execution by guillotine, returned to the house, vomited in the sink, and never spoke about the experience. In the essay “Reflections on the Guillotine,” which accompanied Koestler’s, Camus suggested that rather than telling the condemned man or woman that they will pay the ultimate price or their debt to society for their crime, they instead be told the truth. “If you kill you will be imprisoned for months and years, torn between impossible death and constantly renewed terror, we shall slip into your cell…tie your hands behind your back [and] bind your arms with a strap to that you are forced to stoop [and] then carry you through the corridors [and] seize you by the seat of your pants and throw you on a board [then] let fall from a height of seven feet a 120 pound blade that will slice off your head like a razor.”
What, then, did the judge overseeing the 1995 trial tell Christa Pike when the sentence was rendered? The delivery system for death then was the electric chair and, to the judge’s credit, she did inform Pike that she would be subjected to a degree of electroshock sufficient to kill her. I do not know when the agent of death shifted from electroshock to pentobarbital nor do I know if a judge explained to Pike how the drug would act on her brain and organs to bring about her death. But I am pretty certain that none of the judges informed Pike of one legal scholar’s assessment of this form of death: “It is not the most humane, it is the most humane-looking.” I am even more certain they did not inform her, in case she survived another botched execution by the state of Tennessee, which boasts a history of such botches, that her brain would be irreversibly damaged.
Finally, I am most certain that, whether strangled by a tightened noose, decapitated by a sharpened blade, or injected by what was possibly an expired dose of pentobarbital, the sheer barbarism exercised by officials wearing white coats remains constant.
The post A great Jewish intellectual understood the Kafkaesque horror of Tennessee’s botched execution appeared first on The Forward.
