Aleph’s New Home To Help Jewish Inmates Build New Lives

PITTSBURGH, PA — Pennsylvania, home of the U.S.’s second highest number of federal prisons, right after Texas, sees more than seven out of ten inmates return to prison after release. High rates of re-incarceration are overcrowding prisons, tying up the courts and pushing government officials to find a way to break the street-crime-jail cycle.

Proposed solutions include job training, alcohol and drug addition counseling, and faith based intervention. On May 22, The Aleph Institute – North East Region, Hyman & Martha Rogal Center, celebrated the grand opening of its new home in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, where all these services are now offered, under one freshly renovated roof.

Three hundred people a week have begun filling the 4000 square foot space, taking advantage of the counseling and substance-abuse recovery services available in the center. Since the building became Aleph’s home, even before the official opening, the numbers showing up for post-incarceration services have been climbing.

“When you put the center in the public’s eye, when you make it a respectable, comfortable place to go to, people come,” said Chabad-Lubavitch representative, Rabbi Moshe Mayir Vogel, executive director of Aleph Institute – North East Region.

The program is affiliated with Aleph Institute based in Florida, but is independently funded. Local donors raised the $1 million it took to purchase and renovate the center.

More space means Aleph can offer more, he said. Already the center’s 500 square foot lending library has been bringing Jewish reading material to the 2000 Jewish inmates visited by Aleph’s 42 area volunteers each year. On a practical level, the new center also allows Aleph to store the pallets of grape juice, matzah and the religious items it provides to inmates before Jewish holidays around the year.

Article continued (Lubavitch.com)