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When Jeff Levin recites the Yom Kippur confession, "We have killed," he says he is speaking for an entire society. The San Rafael psychotherapist and social worker has just completed a documentary protesting the death penalty.

Levin's 17-year-old daughter, Cara, who helped her father produce the film, said it is titled "In Our Name" because "execution is in the name of all the people in the state."

The Yom Kippur confession reflects Levin's belief that "as a society, we are missing the mark" when criminals are executed.

Levin videotaped the May 2, 1996 vigil at San Quentin prison where death penalty opponents gathered to protest the execution of triple murderer Keith Daniel Williams.

Williams, who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, parental abuse, untreated manic-depressive illness and drug and alcohol abuse, received medical treatment in prison that transformed him from a "maniac" to a sane and "grandfatherly" — though still mentally ill — person, Levin said.

"As a therapist and as a Jew," Levin adamantly opposed the execution of a mentally ill prisoner. He quoted a protester whose granddaughter was a murder victim and who noted that killing the mentally ill was a Nazi practice.

Levin says his Jewish values led him to oppose the death penalty. He tries "to live, in the broader sense of the word, a kosher life," and feels that creating the documentary was a mitzvah.

As a child hearing about the execution of Adolf Eichmann, Levin found it ironic that the Nazi official was killed as punishment for killing others.

"As a psychotherapist, I think that what happens when we model retribution is …we create a culture in which it's OK to have violence.

"Of course people would want to kill someone who's killed innocents," Levin acknowledges, but he believes that "we are dishonoring our Creator by destroying those whom He has created."

"I think violence can never be ended [with] more violence," said Rabbi Alan Lew, who spoke about Jewish views on the death penalty at the May 2 vigil. "I really feel that we've cheapened the sanctity of life in our culture."

Lew, spiritual leader of San Francisco's Congregation Beth Sholom, agreed with Levin that Yom Kippur involves communal responsibility for violence in society, including murders as well as executions, he noted.

Communal responsibility doesn't change the fact that a murderer is personally responsible for his deeds, Lew said.

While capital punishment is "sprinkled very liberally" throughout the Torah, said Lew, it's not necessary to take this literally.

"We can believe the Torah is sacred precisely because it reflects the tension between the will of God and the way human beings behave, which is sometimes violent," he said.

As Lew explained at the Williams vigil, the Talmud placed so many restrictions on the use of capital punishment that the practice was effectively discontinued. By the early Talmudic period, Rabbis Akiba and Tarfon were commenting that they would never have imposed the death penalty, implying that it was already a thing of the past.

Talmudic commentary also called a rabbinical court that executed one person in seven years "bloodthirsty," and said that, when God sees an execution, He cries out, "My arm hurts, my head hurts."

However, "You can make the argument either way from Jewish sources," said Lew, noting that capital punishment is supported both by a literal reading of the Torah and by a minority of Talmudic rabbis.

"In Our Name" will air on Marin TCI Cable Channel 31 at 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27; 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 21; 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30; and 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7.

Levin hopes to distribute the documentary to other cable stations and community groups. Copies can be obtained by contacting Levin at (415) 258-9559.