Getting kosher food in prison has been a pain in the ass for a while now. There’s the child-molester who wanted a yarmulke and some matzah ball soup in Georgia, and the former Neo-Nazi and statutory rapist in Missouri who was jonesin’ for some kugel. The obvious take home message here is that if you can’t do time in a facility that won’t provide you with kosher food, then you really shouldn’t do the crime. That said, both the child-molester and the statutory rapist won lawsuits suing for kosher food in prison. And in California, after a different child-molester took the state to court for not providing him with kosher meals in 2003, the state promised to make good faith efforts to get kosher food available to all California inmates by 2006.
Kosher Prison Food: yummier than Halal?
This article in the Forward explains some of the unexpected results of what’s called the Jewish Kosher Diet Plan.

As a direct result of the lawsuit, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been scrambling in recent years, in conjunction with the Northern and Southern California boards of rabbis, to install a Jewish chaplain at every prison in order to oversee the preparation of kosher food.

…

The work extends far beyond merely vetting jailhouse kosher cuisine. According to one longtime Jewish chaplain, his niche is as close as a rabbi can come to performing missionary work.

“We work with the underbelly of society, the spiritually void, the morally empty,” said Rabbi Lon Moskowitz, the Jewish chaplain at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. “It’s important to have chaplains so we can facilitate the Jewish Kosher Diet Plan statewide, but it’s a requirement so that the spiritual needs of incarcerated Jews are met.”

That’s all well and good, but to meet someone’s spiritual needs you need to get him to walk in the door, and it’s the kosher meat, more often than not, that does that job:

When the kosher diet plan was first introduced two years ago, [Rabbi Mendel] Slavin said, non-Jewish inmates began attending his services and claiming to be Jewish in order to get on the meal plan. “With the kosher diet, it became fashionable to be Jewish,” he said. He had worked to explain to the non-Jews that eating kosher was not a privilege, but rather a requirement for those who truly were observant Jews.

 

Isn’t it funny that kosher food is getting prisoners to explore their spiritual lives, and at the same time kosher food is getting a lot of Hasidic rabbis and businessmen in trouble as their shady meatpacking plant is turned inside out?

Kosher prison food: like kosher plane food, but worse? A former neo-Nazi in Missouri has won a case requesting kosher food in prison. Prison officials don't want to deal with the cost or hassle (kosher food is twice as expensive and might cause pushing and shoving in the meal lines, apparently), and doubt exactly how serious Norman Lee Toler—serving a 10-year sentence for statutory rape—really is about his Judaism. On the one hand he has several white supremacist tattoos, including one that says SS, and has been caught with pictures of Hitler and white supremacist pamphlets in the past. On the other hand, he's said to regularly read Torah and maintain contact with rabbis, and he has a reputation among the inmates for being Jewish. For now, Toler has to make do with treyf food, but the prison is under court order to look into its options.

Other neo-Nazis and white supremacists turned (friend of the) Jews who have made recent news include Pinchads Zlotosvksky and Tim Zaal.

Related: We commented on a similar case in Georgia last year, but in that instance it wasn’t a neo-Nazi requesting kosher food—it was a child molester/murderer.

Let my people go: Ancient Egyptian prison scenePassover is a time to commemorate our freedom, but as New York Magazine points out, perhaps no one understands the meaning of the holiday more than the Jewish inmates at Otisville Prison. The Jewish prisoners, who number about 60, hold a yearly Seder at the medium-security facility in upstate New York. Unlike the ancient Israelites, who were enslaved by Pharaoh against their will, the inmates at Otisville are mostly white collar criminals. Still, prison chaplain Gary Friedman argues that the Seder allows the men to celebrate freedom, at least in the metaphorical sense. “The Haggadah has a line that reads ‘Tonight we are all free men,’ and for the duration of the Seder, they are.”

The Texas Department of Corrections is afraid its prisoners will get ideas.

 After reading Dave Zirin's book, "Welcome to the Terrordome", Texas death row inmate Kenneth Foster, who was sentenced for abetting a murder, wrote Zirin a letter detailing his thoughts on sports and prison: 

"I have never had the opportunity to view sports in this way. And as I went through these revelations I began to have epiphanies about the way sports have a similar existence in prison. The similarities shook me. Facing execution, the only thing that I began to get obsessive about was how to get heard and be free, and as the saying goes — you can't serve two gods. Sports, as you know, becomes a way of life. You monitor it, you almost come to breathe it. Sports becomes a way of life in prison, because it becomes a way of survival. For men that don't have family or friends to help them financially it becomes a way to occupy your time. That's another sad story in itself, but it's the root to many men's obsession with sports."

While it’s easy to fall in love with the genius (relative to expectations of barbarousness) of a prisonmate (see: Norman Mailer), the prison system should still readily encourage a correspondence between Zirin and Foster. Instead, when Zirin sent Foster a copy of his first book, "What's My Name Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the US", the Texas Department of Corrections quickly proclaimed the book ill-suited, even dangerous, to its system. Writes Zirin:

A form titled "Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice, Publication review/denial notification" issued to Kenneth on August 9 reads that What's My Name Fool? Was banned from the row because, "It contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or riots." They specifically write that "pages 44 & 55" met this criteria.

After lifting my jaw off the ground, I went to those dangerous palindromic pages.

On 44, the radioactive quote in question comes from that seditious revolutionary Jackie Robinson — you know, the guy whose number is retired by all of Major League Baseball. I quote Robinson's autobiography when he writes about suffering racism early in his rookie season. He wrote: 

"I felt tortured and I tried to just play ball and ignore the insults but it was really getting to me. For one wild and rage crazed moment I thought, 'To hell with Mr. Rickey's noble experiment. To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create.' I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of bitches, and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all."

On page 55, the offensive passage was about Jack Johnson's defeat of the "Great White Hope," Jim Jeffries. It reads, "Johnson was faster, stronger and smarter than Jeffries. He knocked Jeffries out with ease. After Johnson's victory, there were race riots around the country in Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas and Washington, D.C. Most of the riots consisted of white lynch mobs attacking Blacks, and Blacks fighting back. This reaction to a boxing match was one of the most widespread racial uprisings in the U.S. until the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

You probably already know all about those Ethiopians that Israel airlifted in in 1984 and 1991. Called Beta Israel or Falashas, they were Jews living in Ethiopia, isolated from the rest of world Jewry who had a vague knowledge of their existence, but little interest in them. In 1975 Israel officially recognized them as Jews, and in 1984, Operation Moses began, transporting them to Israel from Sudan, where many had fled due to persecution and widespread famine. Operation Solomon followed in 1991. Today there are over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel, and if I had a nickel for every time I heard a Zionist lecturer talk about how Israel is the only country to ever airlift Africans out of Africa in a time of famine I would be able to pay off all my student loans.
Sudanese Refugees in Israel: Are screwed
I am all about the Ethiopian community in Israel (I’m particularly in favor of the Ethiopian Hebrew U security guard named Shlomo marrying me and making many babies with me. Yum.), and I think it’s great that Israel got them out of a famine stricken country, but if that’s really a top priority of the country, shouldn’t Israel be somewhat more tolerant of Sudanese refugees who’ve escaped into Israel?

There are only a handful of refugees from Darfur who have managed to get into Israel (by way of Egypt), but they’ve been jailed, or stuck on army bases. Some have been placed under house arrest on kibbutzim while the Israeli government tries to find countries where they can send them in coordination with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Why can’t they stay in Israel? Sudan is considered an enemy country, so Sudanese refugees aren’t eligible for asylum in the Holy Land.

I read stuff like this and I want to break something. I can see why Israel might not have the wherewithal to send troops to Darfur, what with Lebanon and the PA still major concerns, but there’s no excuse for not allowing refugees who’ve walked hundreds of miles and escaped one of the greatest atrocities of our time to at least hang out somewhere without being arrested and severely restricted.

Not standing by idly while your brother’s blood is spilled is a major tenet of Jewish law, and it’s great to know that Jewish causes have been at the forefront of activism in favor intervention in Darfur, but this complete lack of compassion for victims in Israel makes me crazy.

I have no practical advice today. Just serious despair.

Prison Fare: Scrumptious, yes... But is it kosher?This is not a new story by any means. In fact, I tried (since I happen to live near the prison) to get in and interview Ralph Benning myself over a year ago (to no avail) but I’ve been thinking about it lately.

(Aside: some articles refer to the man in question as Ralph Harrison Benning. Why is it that when someone murders a man, people start using the murderers middle name? Is it because there are other Ralph Benning’s out there, and nobody wants to be confused with this particular—however Jewish—Ralph Benning?)

Anyway… the narrative runs like this:

Ralph Benning is an inmate at the Georgia State Prison in Hancock… Jewish by birth, he was raised in a Christian household, but elected to return to the Jewish faith while in prison. Correctional officials refused to provide him with kosher food, wear a yarmulke, or accommodate his religious practices in other ways….

So Benning decided to sue for his rights, and those rights were upheld in 2004. Prison inmates can now wear a yarmulke in the state of Georgia. They can leave the cheese off their burgers too… which is nice for them…

But I have two thoughts on this whole situation.

1. I’m surprised to find myself a little bothered by the outcome of the case. (my civil liberty bone is bumping up against my separation of church and state bone) Although the yarmulke thing doesn’t bug me at all (I don’t really care what kind of headgear inmates wear as a rule) I’m not sure how I feel about accommodating the dietary needs of inmates for religious reasons. I wonder where we’ll draw the line. As someone who has worked for Kosher agencies, I know how tricky it can be to keep an institution in line regarding kashruth policies, and I cannot imagine the complications for the prison. What if Catholics turn down fish on Fridays, Hindus turn up their noses at beef, etc? Then there’s that tricky issue of WHAT we include as a religion…. What happens when suddenly a tree-goddess-worshipper wants a special diet of elderberries and tree sap? Or a Satanist requests 14 live mice each day? It just seems a slippery slope to me. “I’m a candy-god worshipper. I can only eat Necco wafers!”
2. And then too, what about Shabbat? What about Jewish holidays? What about all the other laws? If we allow dietary observance, do we then obligate ourselves to accommodating ALL the Jewish laws, and then all the laws of every faith? This seems really dangerous to me? How can a prison commit to doing this? “My religion prohibits me from being raped anally, so the prison needs to keep Fancy Joe away from my backside!”

I mean, my gut instinct when I first heard about this case was “Right on, Benning!” But then I realized it was just because he happens to be a Jew. If he were some other faith I think I might be like, “Dude, you killed someone. What does your god have to say about that?”

Any thoughts, wise Jewcy readers?