JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Jewish inmates who request cheesecake for Shavuot must get it. That’s what a three-judge federal appeals court panel unanimously ruled last week in a lawsuit filed by two Jewish prisoners who held that the vegan meals the Michigan Department of Corrections served them did not fulfill their kosher dietary needs. Cheesecake was not in the…
Kat Morgan led her last Shabbat service inside San Quentin State Prison on March 13. At one point during that service, and her co-leaders divided the congregants into small groups to share things that bring them joy during darker moments. “These people are experts in resilience,” she said. “They shared gratitude for things like prayer,…
A federal judge denied the infamous Jewish Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff compassionate release from prison Thursday, confirming that he wants the financier to die behind bars. Judge Denny Chin, the same judge who signed off on Madoff’s 150-year sentence in 2009, said, “it was fully my intent that he live out the rest of…
I live in New York City which is at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. I wear a face mask to walk my dog every day. People pass by and our dogs sniff each other while we chat from a social distance, and more than one dog owner has told me that they feel like…
My 93-year-old mom, who survived the Holocaust, died of COVID-19 in an assisted living facility in New Jersey on April 5. I found out she was dead from a text with the words Baruch Dayan Haemet, the Jewish blessing at the time of death. Only days earlier, my nephew called to tell me she had…
Under the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up its policy of deporting immigrant criminals upon the completion of their prison sentences. But the agency has made an exception for an Israeli rabbi who was convicted of racketeering and money laundering conspiracy, Hamodia reported Saturday night. Rabbi Mordechai Samet, a resident of the…
Earlier this summer, 3,100 people were released from federal prison ahead of schedule under a new criminal justice reform bill signed into law late last year. Many will find jobs and housing, transitioning back into their communities. It’s an important step in the ongoing fight for criminal justice reform. But it hardly fixes America’s over-incarceration…
Jared Kushner told Republican donors that people being released from jail are registering for the party, Axios reported. The senior White House adviser talked up his prison reform law at a donor retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last week, according to people in attendance. President Trump, his father-in-law, signed the bill into law at the…
Hybrid: Online and at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
Oct 2, 2022
6:30 pm ET ·
A Sukkah, IMKHA, created by artist Tobi Kahn, for the Marlene Meyerson JCC of Manhattan is an installation consisting of 13 interrelated sculpted painted wooden panels, constituting a single work of art. Join for a panel discussion with Rabbi Joanna Samuels, Chief Executive Director of the Marlene Meyerson JCC of Manhattan, Talya Zax, Innovation Editor of the Forward, and Tobi Kahn, Artist. Moderated by Mattie Kahn.