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The monographic study analyses the early modern adaptations and simulations of the rabbinic four types of capital punishment—strangling, drowning, decapitation, and burning. It investigates the literary strategies that promote the implementation of these highly symbolic simulations by addressing both the social meaning of physically performed practices and the spiritual dimension of imaginative exercises of self-execution. Furthermore, it examines the mechanisms of performative speech acts as well as attitudes towards emotional and physical pain, and it pays attention to the distinction between the role that language plays in rituals and the language that tells us about rituals. The analysis shows how the engendering of “as if” experiences of dying serves different functions—such as purification, self-punishment, or subordination—and how the rabbis’ purely theoretical and legalistic discussions were transformed into a crucial aspect of an everyday pietistic lifestyle. Particular attention is paid to the place of capital punishment in prayer, hagiography, and ethical wills. The reception history of these three fields of application is presented in the context of Hebrew book printing of the late sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries.