F TAY-SACHS
R F R E E E E
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Inside Continued from Page 1
afterward. There are now 12 Jewish men
incarcerated in SCI-Phoenix.

Though the exact number of
incarcerated Jews there has
fluctuated over the years, it has
usually been around the size of
a minyan.

According to
Frank Jordan, who is incarcerated
at SCI-Phoenix, serving a life
sentence on homicide charges,
many of these men have
been friends for decades after
spending so many years on the
inside together. One inmate has
been incarcerated since 1963.

They are joined by a dozen
or so others: men interested
in Judaism who want to learn
more. Though he believes most
have pure intentions, Jordan
claims that — much like on the
outside — some just come to
services for the food that follows.

For Rosh Hashanah and
Yom Kippur, the men would
unstack chairs and drag them
into a circle, where a volun-
teer chaplain would lead them
in prayer and discussion. They
would roll their mobile Torah
ark out of the closet and closer
to the circle, where it would
become the service’s focal point.

Afterward, the havurah
would share a meal together,
one of two festive meals the
prison provides. Though the
prison would distribute the
meals, a couple of men from the
prison’s east side volunteered to
cook some Ashkenazi favorites:
roasted chicken, potato kugel,
(an albeit watery) matzah ball
soup. If they were fortunate,
the food would come from the
outside; the taste of a brisket
from several years back still
lingers in Jordan’s memory.

Last year, however, the
meal, the services and the
spiritual impact of the holiday
were different. And it will be
different this year, too.

Instead of gathering in the
makeshift chapel, the Jewish
men stayed in their cells,
watching services from Central
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Two men reading Torah at the synagogue at SCI-Graterford, the state
prison replaced by SCI-Phoenix in 2018.
Jewish Exponent archives
community over the High
Holidays is counter to what
these holidays require from
Jews who observe.

For those on the outside, the
process of teshuvah, or repen-
tance and transformation,
takes place in community with
others. In addition to being
able to apologize to those one
has hurt, an individual also
needs encouragement to work
up the courage to confront
someone, write a letter to
someone they’ve hurt and
provide emotional support,
Bauer said. On the inside, that
process can’t happen.

“Many of the essential
components that make the tradi-
tional Jewish process of teshuvah
successful are not available to
people who are incarcerated this
year,” Bauer said.

In the Jewish tradition,
having the opportunity to
apologize to whom you’ve hurt
is a large part of teshuvah.

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Though some victims may
not be interested in getting an
apology, to deny a perpetrator
the ability to offer one to a
victim open to it undermines
the process of repentance.

“If you are taken out of the
community and put in a prison
See Inside, Page 21
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Rabbi David Bauer is the part-
time chaplain at SCI-Phoenix.

Photo by M. Sumner
Synagogue in New York broad-
cast on closed-circuit televisions.

They received a dressed-down
festive meal, complete with eight
ounces of a “calcium fluoride
beverage,” which doesn’t hold
a (Shabbat) candle to beloved
Kedem grape juice.

Because the social component
of the holidays is so important
to the inmates, the isolation of
last year’s tamped-down holiday
observations was devastating.

“It’s heart-wrenching that
we can’t at least gather with
our crew,” Jordan said. “For
them to not allow us to come
together once a week or for our
High Holidays is ridiculous.”
According to Jordan,
the general
population of SCI-Phoenix is mostly
Rabbi Elyse Wechterman is a
volunteer chaplain at SCI-Phoenix.

Courtesy of the Reconstructionist
Rabbinical Association
vaccinated. Still, at this
point, Rabbi David Bauer, the
part-time prison chaplain at
SCI-Phoenix, said that due to
concerns over the delta variant,
the east and west sides of the
prison won’t come together for
services this year. Just as last
year, the men will likely observe
the holidays from their cells.

“The level of fear around
any multiple-person event
turning into a superspreader
event just completely put the
kibosh on any of our more
ambitious plans of gathering
people together,” Bauer said.

Beyond the disappointment
of another year of separa-
tion from friends (in addition
to family members on the
outside), the loss of Jewish
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SEPTEMBER 2, 2021
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