Rabbinical Students Visit Prison

Aberdeen, WA — There are only a handful of Jews in the Stafford Creek Correctional Center. They say a general lack of understanding about their faith is stressful. So is what feels like constant Christian proselytizing by fellow inmates and the occasional corrections officer.

But they say that even the neo-Nazis who roam the prison aren’t as obnoxious as the day-to-day indignities they face for wearing yarmulkes, or having to explain why pork pepperoni is not kosher.

Corrections Department Chaplain Gary Friedman in Olympia acknowledged that being estranged from the faith community is hard on Jewish inmates. “They build prisons (in rural areas)” where there aren’t many Jews, Friedman said. He estimated that 95 percent of the Washington State Jewish community — indeed, most of the “minority faiths,” like Islam and Buddhism — is on the I-5 corridor.

Which is why the Aleph Institute, a non-profit organization based in Miami, sent rabbinical students Mendel Sossonko, 23, and Berel Zaklikofsky, 24, across the Western states to visit prisons, including Stafford Creek. The mission is to connect Jewish inmates with their communities.

“We’re here to spend good Jewish quality time,” Zaklikofsky said Tuesday.

As Sossonko would tell the 10 or so inmates who dropped into the class at various times, “When one Jew meets another Jew, it is a happy thing. It’s a good day.”

That morning the rabbinical students had been at the Women’s Correctional Center at Purdy near Gig Harbor, where they had two inmate visitors, both of whom were unaware of the existence of the other Jewish inmate.

“We are here to hook it up,” Sossonko said, the English slang tinted with the young Hasid’s accent.

(Hasidic Judaism follows the commandments laid out in the Torah, the first six books of the Bible, very stringently.)

The students, who are almost finished with their training, didn’t lead a service so much as come to talk about being good Jews in prison. Sossonko and Zaklikofsky related a story about the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem, which is memorialized on the ninth day of the month Av, which is rapidly approaching. A conflict between two men built to the point that one was so humiliated by the other he sought his revenge on the whole community, and tricked the Romans into laying waste to the temple. Eventually, a second temple was razed as well.

“It says in the Talmud (a Jewish book of law and ethics) that the reason the temple was destroyed was because of hate for no reason; the way to rebuild the temple is to love for no reason,” Sossonko said.

Indeed, mitzvahs, or good deeds, were part of the evening’s discussion. One can obey all the commandments in the Torah, Sossonko said, “But it is the little good deed that tips the scale” to rebuild the third temple.

The students played a round of “Stump the Rabbi,” which quickly turned into a discussion about Kosher food and the complications facing it in prison (food is always a big topic in prison, Friedman said). But the inmates were also fixated on Jewish justice. In the religious tradition, Friedman said, there is no such thing as incarceration. Jewish justice is about restoration.

Schefflin asked how is it possible to apologize for his crimes if he is ordered to not contact his victim, even through a third party.

“I know I have a responsibility to the community,” Schefflin said. “Doesn’t the community have some responsibility to me?”

Friedman said yes, ideally, Jews reach out to other Jews. “But then, there is reality and we also have to deal with reality.”

The end result — the inmates were urged to do all they could to atone for their transgressions, because “Hashem” (used in place of “God” to show respect) will remove the obligation through the force of the inmates’ efforts.

“Do the best you can,” Zaklikofsky said.

The students participated in what amounted to Mitchell Pouliot’s Bar Mitzvah. He told them he had never prayed with the tefillim, a small box of scripture connected to long leather straps. When the students and Friedman insisted that Pouliot must have his first tefillim prayer, he initially resisted — he didn’t want to roll up his sleeves to expose tattoos, which are considered idolatrous and a mutilation of the body.

“We don’t hate on tattoos here,” said inmate Miranda Pingitore, who has longed to convert for more than a decade but is prohibited from doing so in prison. His release is today, he said, and he hopes to find a synagogue that will accept him.

Pouliot pulled his sleeves up in a corner of the room, and Friedman and Zaklikofsky put the small box on his head and wrapped his arms in the leather straps. Pouliot was red as a beet but beaming after performing the prayers.

“It was an awakening for me,” Pouliot said afterward. “It meant a lot to me.”

“I never felt so spiritual, to help another Jew,” Zaklikofsky said.

Matthew Perry, an inmate who said he has been in prison for about seven years, said the visits from outside Jews mean the world to him.

“It doesn’t make a difference who comes,” Perry, who grew up in Israel and wears his yarmulke every day, said. “The rabbinical students bring such big pleasure for such a short time.”