Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Tennessee Wife Killer Sues For Better Kosher Food

(JTA) — A prison inmate in Tennessee filed an over 200-page lawsuit alleging that the prison system is trying to force him to break the Jewish laws of kashrut by providing him with substandard kosher meals.

Perry March, who has served 10 years of a 56-year sentence for the 1996 murder of his wife (though the body has never been found) and a plot to murder her parents, filed the lawsuit earlier this month against the Tennessee Department of Correction and Aramark food service in Nashville federal court, the Tennessean reported.

March, who is Jewish and is an attorney representing himself, said that prison service and the food service are deliberately discriminating against him by providing meals that are not nutritious and do not adhere to the Jewish laws regulating diet and preparation of food, according to the newspaper.

He said the soy meals being served to him are of a poor quality and that he is being offered a kosher diet plan with far fewer entree options than standard meal plans.

He blames the poor kosher options on cost cutting and “corporate greed.” March also accuses the prison system of anti-Semitism.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $325,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.