Jewish outreach program reaches Duluth inmates

DULUTH, MN — Rabbinical students Meir Menkes and Zalmi Klyne have spent the past couple of weeks traveling with an ice chest in the backseat of their rental car, firing up a George Foreman grill to cook their kosher food, staying in Motel 6’s, and visiting Jewish prison inmates in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana.

How do a couple of 20-year-old students from Southern California get the confidence to walk into a prison and think they can make a difference? And why are they sacrificing three weeks of their summer for work without pay?

“It’s something that Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson taught us, that every single person in this world, God created and knows what they’re there for,’’ Menkes said. “Every single person, no matter what age they are, has the opportunity to help someone else and to do a good deed and to make the world a better place.’’

Schneerson founded The Aleph Institute, a Miami-based outreach program that serves Jewish people in U.S. prisons so that they can stay connected to their families, communities and Jewish heritage through programs and services from the time they are arrested throughout their imprisonment.

Menkes and Klyne are one of 12 pairs of Rabbinical students from The Aleph Institute who will visit about 3,600 Jewish inmates in 360 prisons in 37 states through September.

The pair visited with five Jewish inmates at the Duluth Federal Prison on Sunday. They then planned to drive about 420 miles in their rental car to Kincheloe, Mich., where they were to visit more inmates at 8 a.m. today. When their mission ends Thursday, they will have traveled to 33 prisons in four states.

Menkes, from Santa Monica, Calif., is the son of a rabbi. The inspiration for his volunteer service was a conversation he had with a man whom his father had visited in prison.

“He couldn’t stop expressing to me how much it meant to him that a Jewish person who had no idea who he was would take time to visit him in prison,’’ Menkes said. “Sometimes people in prison are really good people who made mistakes. When I heard how much that visit meant to him and I heard about the Aleph Institute, I figured here would be a good opportunity for me to go and reach out to someone who was in a hard situation like my father did. The Rebbe taught us that reaching out for a Jew in whatever situation he is in is a very important thing. This is my little step of goodness and kindness.’’

“I wanted the opportunity to go and visit people and do something good — to help someone,’’ Klyne said.

Menkes and Klyne, who is from Los Angeles, have known each other since third grade and said this is just another step in reaching their goals of becoming rabbis.

Menkes said he believes this experience will make him a better rabbi.

“Part of being a rabbi is learning how to help people connect the Torah, which is the bible, to their own lives,’’ he said. “When you are a rabbi who has been around and knows a lot and has met a lot of people in different situations, it helps you become a better rabbi, which helps you to relate with people on a better note in every situation. And these are some of the hardest situations that you can have a person in, locked up.’’

The students said the inmates that they talked to Sunday were not convicted of violent crime. Like most at the federal prison in Duluth, they were serving time for white-collar crime and drug offenses, they said.

However, they didn’t ask the men to tell them about their pasts. That is not part of their mission.

“Our job is to go speak to them, connect them with their faith, and help them out in any way we can,’’ Klyne said. “We sit around a table. We don’t come in and say we’re going to teach a lesson. We open a discussion. We listen.’’

And they conduct a Jewish service for the inmates they visit.

At the Duluth prison they said they performed a service in which two Jewish men — one of whom was 60 years old — had never taken part in before.

A Jewish custom is to wear Tefillin — a pair of black leather scrolls of parchment inscribed with biblical verses — wrapped around the arm, hand and fingers and another above the forehead — during weekday morning prayer services. The custom starts with a 13th birthday and bar mitzvah. The two imates put on the Tefillin on Sunday. Klyne said in essence he and his partner oversaw two bar mitzvahs.

Both students said inmates have been receptive, appreciative and some have become emotional during their visits.

“In walks these two 20-year-old boys they never met before and will probably never meet again,’’ Menkes said. “We come in with a smile and a prayer. All I see is a Jewish man. We give support, do a prayer and let them know they’re not forgotten and that the Aleph Institute sent us and the Institute is willing to send prayer books, a Torah. If they have any problems, they can write to Aleph. It’s a very special thing. A lot of people sit in prison and have no connection to the world.’’