Rabbi Lavey Derby wasn’t sure how many executions he’s attended. When asked outside of San Quentin’s prison gates on Tuesday evening, Jan. 18, he said it was his fourth. Then, he changed it to fifth. Later still, he changed it to his sixth.
Derby was one of some 300 people — a large number of them Jews — who came to show opposition to the execution of Donald J. Beardslee, by keeping vigil outside the prison gates during the hours leading up to the execution at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 19. Beardslee was the 11th person executed in California since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1978.
He was convicted for the 1981 murders of Patty Geddling, 23, and Stacey Benjamin, 19.
The spiritual leader of Tiburon’s Congregation Kol Shofar came to pray for Beardslee for the same reason that he came for Stephen Wayne Anderson before him, and Robert Lee Massie before him.
“I keep coming because I’m a rabbi that is as close as any to this prison, and my understanding of the rabbinic tradition is that the death penalty should not be used,” he said.
Derby was joined by several rabbinical colleagues — including Alan Lew of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom, David Cooper of Berkeley’s Kehilla Community Synagogue and former chaplain Bernie Robinson — along with Ken Kramarz, director of Camp Tawonga and contingents from Beth Sholom, Kol Shofar and San Rafael’s Congregation Rodef Sholom. There was also a group of Jewish teens, some of whom are members of Jewish Youth for Community Action.
“I don’t believe in the death penalty at all,” said JYCA participant Daniel Schoen, peeking out from a woolen Oakland A’s cap, as he looked over the scene with his friend Sam Hammer-Nahman. Both seniors at Berkeley High, they discussed the vigil in their class about social justice.
Kramarz held a sign with a quote from Anne Frank: “I keep my ideals because I still really believe people are good at heart” inside a Magen David. Ron Gerlitz carried one of two hastily scrawled signs that said “Israeli Against Murder By State” and “Jew Against Murder by State.”
Gerlitz, an Israeli who has been living in Palo Alto for the past two years, will return to Israel in several weeks. But he made the drive from the Peninsula to show his dissent.
“I felt I could not be silent. I live here now, and such cruelty is being done. I am here as a human being overall, more than an Israeli or Jew.”
Meanwhile, speaker after speaker mounted the low platform to speak out against the death penalty.
When Derby and Lew addressed the crowd minutes before midnight, the woman introducing them noted that Jewish leaders have been among the strongest advocates against capital punishment.
Derby quoted Psalm 23, which says: “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
Said Derby: “But my community of faith lives with the shadow of death but we do not fear no evil, we fear great evil.”
Citing San Quentin in a sequence with Fallujah and Kabul, Lew quoted from the Talmud. “Killing will never bring peace or closure,” he said. “It will only bring more violence.”
At midnight, the names of all those executed by the state of California as well as their victims were read aloud. People embraced as silence fell, interrupted only by the occasional sniffle, sob and the incessant clicking of journalists’ cameras.
The wind picked up after midnight, as if there was a definite shift in the air. And then, as the crowd began to solemnly sing “Amazing Grace,” a small group huddled together in the blustery cold and said Kaddish.