Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

The Feds Are Spending $21,799 On Yom Kippur Meals For Jewish Inmates

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has set aside $21,799 for kosher items for Jewish prisoners in facilities in the eye of Hurricane Florence this Yom Kippur, TMZ reported.

Kosher food in prisons has been the subject of much media attention in recent years, from a storyline on Netflix’s “Orange Is The New Black” about prisoners pretending to be Jewish to get kosher meals, to the Tunisian Jew denied kosher food in prison, to Florida’s court issued order to begin serving kosher meals to eligible candidates.

Some prisoners tend to see kosher food as safer. “If they are using prepackaged, sealed meals, the inmates believe they are safer,” Gary Friedman, chairman of Jewish Prisoner Services International told the New York Times. Take a look at a sample prison kosher menu from 2016 here — and compare it to the standard prison meal, and the reason for the media uproar becomes evident.

While the Bureau of Prisons provides kosher food, incarcerated Jews can observe holidays using prayerbooks, shofars and services provided by the Lubavitch-run Aleph Institute, and often rely on advocacy provided by Jewish Prisoner Services International.

Israel’s chief rabbi of prison services, Rabbi Yekutiel Vizner, says that Yom Kippur is a particularly important holiday for the incarcerated. “You see the tears,” he told Radio Kol Chai. “The prisoners ask me, ‘Rabbi, does God accept our repentance? We are truly sorry.’”

Shira Feder is a writer. She’s at [email protected] and @shirafeder

A message from our CEO & publisher 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.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.