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(New York Jewish Week) — Miriam Tohill, a Jewish chaplain intern at Rikers Island, is trying ahead to co-leading Passover seders for Jewish inmates this yr for the primary time. However situations on the New York Metropolis jail advanced will not be excellent.
For the seders, held on the primary and second nights of the vacation, some 70 to 100 inmates can be bussed from totally different components of the island advanced to a gymnasium that “seems like a highschool gymnasium,” mentioned Tohill, 32, who makes use of the pronouns “she” and “they.” Sending contributors to hunt for the afikoman, a hidden piece of matzah, is “discouraged,” she added, “for apparent causes.”
The seder custom of placing pillows on the room’s flimsy folding chairs, they mentioned, is likewise prohibited. And whereas the door of the gymnasium, somewhat than a door to the skin, can be opened for Elijah the prophet, they mentioned, “the symbolism is clearly muted.”
Past that, Tohill added, it could be a problem to create a festive temper. Corrections officers can be sitting on bleachers in conjunction with the room, which has a “squeaky flooring, very tall ceiling, [and] horrible acoustics.”
Nonetheless, Tohill expects the seders at Rikers to be full of which means. She and others who work with Jewish inmates on the jail say that the vacation — which celebrates the traditional Jewish exodus from slavery to freedom — takes on a distinct resonance when celebrated by individuals at the moment behind bars.
“It’s each simpler and tougher to speak about slavery, freedom and hope while you’re incarcerated, however we’re all hoping for freedom and rehabilitation and progress sooner or later,” mentioned Rabbi Gabriel Kretzmer Seed, Rikers’ Jewish chaplain. “Folks had stunning insights about what freedom means to them, particularly speaking about how they be happy even once they’re incarcerated. I used to be very impressed by that.”
Seed, who acquired ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the liberal Orthodox seminary within the Bronx, started working as a chaplain at Rikers in 2018. The jail has been criticized for harsh situations, which embody proof of inmates caged in tiny showers and sleeping on flooring subsequent to a pile of excrement. The advanced has additionally been the positioning of suicides, beatings and extra. Nineteen individuals died at Rikers in 2022 — the jail’s highest dying fee since 2013, and the town is required by regulation to shut it by 2027, although whether or not that can be attainable is unclear.
Seed mentioned that whereas Rikers generally is a unstable and intense atmosphere, it has additionally given him a way of gratitude, highlighting the Jewish idea of teshuva, or repentance, and the concept everybody deserves a second likelihood. Seed mentioned Rikers’ Jewish inmates come from a spread of spiritual backgrounds, from haredi Orthodox individuals educated in yeshivas to others who determined to discover their Judaism as soon as they had been incarcerated. He holds weekly companies on the jail that draw as much as 12 attendees; this week’s teachings mentioned the ideas of freedom and slavery as a precursor to the seders.
“I’m sort of buoyed by these values,” Seed mentioned, referring to teshuva. “Once I’m having a tough day, I go away my workplace, go to a housing space, and persons are simply so grateful for even just a few visits, a couple of minutes once I step into their housing space, or once I get to show and have interaction with individuals, and that simply lifts me up and jogs my memory why I do that work.”
Yr spherical, Rikers Island affords kosher meals, which is offered by the town. Seed and Division of Corrections officers wouldn’t present specifics on the place the meals comes from, saying solely that it comes from “totally different caterers.” And matzah isn’t solely accessible on Passover: Jewish inmates eat the unleavened bread year-round at Rikers as a result of it’s a kosher meals choice that’s simply accessible.
There are Orthodox volunteer teams that assist carry kosher meals into the jail, together with members of L’asurim, a nonprofit that helps prisoners, and the Lubavitch Youth Group, a department of the Chabad Hasidic motion.
Rabbi Shmuel Tevel, who’s lively within the Lubavitch group, advised the New York Jewish Week that he visits Jewish inmates often at Rikers and different prisons throughout the state. “For an inmate sitting in a jail cell in these darkest moments, in a state the place they really feel they’re on the finish of their rope, they should tie a knot and cling on,” he mentioned. “That’s what we give them.”
The Lubavitch Youth Group exterior of Rikers Island doing outreach work throughout Purim. (Courtesy)
Forward of Passover, his group is delivering 40 kilos of matzah, together with grape juice, haroset and vacuum-packed seder plates to some cells whose inmates received’t be allowed to attend the seder.
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Zalman Tevel, Shmuel’s brother, who runs the group’s volunteer initiative at Rikers, advised the New York Jewish Week that he spoke to a guard after visiting inmates through the vacation of Purim final month, and the guard advised him the inmates had been “in a greater state.”
“They’re nearer to God,” he mentioned. “It leaves an excellent influence.”
Tohill described her work on Rikers, which incorporates working with inmates in different methods, in related phrases. Tohill mentioned the work permits her to offer Jewish teachings in “a spot that has so little area for pleasure, or God.” She in contrast the seder at Rikers to the tabernacle that the traditional Israelites constructed within the desert.
“We put all this care into it, figuring out that it’s non permanent, and we’re going to take it down once more,” Tohill mentioned. “We’re within the wilderness and desperately want a spot to fulfill Hashem. It’s so non permanent and imperfect, however that makes it much more value placing the time into.”
For Tohill, co-leading the seders is a part of their grasp’s challenge on the Union Theological Seminary, a historically Protestant seminary in Manhattan that now focuses on “coaching individuals of all faiths and none who’re referred to as to the work of social justice on this planet.” Tohill’s challenge explores the which means of Passover for oppressed individuals.
“I used to be able to ask, what does this Seder do for us spiritually, emotionally, communally?” Tohill mentioned. “What does it promise to us if now we have no entry to freedom for people who find themselves incarcerated? That grew to become an enormous query for me, a theological query about what does this ritual do and the way can we as Jews take into consideration liberation?”
Tohill, who lives within the uptown Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, mentioned that a number of the inmates have written about their private tales and can share how they relate to Passover on the seder.
“Now we have congregants who’ve written poems about what sense they make of the Exodus story or of the 4 cups of wine,” Tohill mentioned, referencing a central ritual of the seder. “Now we have congregants who’ve completed drawings about their household that, to them, really feel associated to the Passover story in numerous methods.”
Requests to talk to an inmate planning to attend a seder, or to see inmates’ drawings or writings, had been denied by the Division of Corrections.
Tohill referred to as Rikers “a damaged system” and mentioned celebrating Passover feels significantly pressing there. They in contrast Rikers Island to “a floating trash heap in the midst of the ocean that we don’t need anybody to note.”
“Passover is a chance to note and ask who’s being made invisible,” Tohill mentioned. “The remainder of the individuals in New York Metropolis who will not be straight impacted by the jail industrial advanced get to fake it’s not occurring. I want to ask that, this Pesach, individuals take the chance to cease pretending.”
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