At Rikers Island, Jewish volunteers find a ‘powerful connection’ with inmates by leading prayer services
Jewish young adults from UWS Base offer company, conversation and Torah to those in custody at the city’s most notorious jail
Rikers Island
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Opinion Hate crimes and antisemitism are rising in NYC. The governor’s plan will make things worse
Rikers Island, New York City’s jail complex, is in a humanitarian crisis. Mired by dysfunction, unsanitary conditions and two deaths in the past month, the situation is dire. Both the current and previous mayor vowed to close the complex, given decades of violence and mismanagement. Despite this, instead of looking for real solutions to the…
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News Rikers Island grape juice theft robs Jewish detainees of kiddush
When Cantor Ilana Plutzer was serving as a chaplain at Rikers Island a few years ago, she went to the kitchen to get grape juice for Jews in the jail who said they were not getting it with Shabbat meals as they were promised. Plutzer said a kitchen worker told her they did not have…
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Community Family Separation Is Never Humane — Even When Parents Are Inmates
It is a Monday afternoon in early June. Three black vans sit idling in front of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan; sitting inside are mothers waiting to enjoy two hours with their children — making art, singing and playing. For these mothers, this isn’t an experience they can take for granted. They are inmates from…
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Opinion Rabbi Learns Repentence From Prisoners
“Welcome to the Waldorf Astoria,” said the jail guard as he showed me the room I would sleep in, my prison issue bedding (top sheet, bottom sheet, two pillowcases, no pillow) and the vacuum-packed kosher meals that had been prepared for me. This was the beginning of the three days of this High Holy Day…
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The Schmooze Bringing Slavic Soul to Rikers Island
As their name implies, Slavic Soul Party! updates traditional Eastern European sounds with a festive, contemporary feel. Their instrumental music conjures carnivals and circuses, pep bands and klezmer bands, James Brown and James Bond. Brooklyn music aficionados may know Slavic Soul Party! from their weekly Tuesday gigs at Barbès; uptowners may have caught them at…
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The Schmooze Kosher Meals Not Kosher Enough for Pedophile
When most inmates complain about jail food, they’re told — literally — to eat it up. Not Baruch Lebovits. The disgraced Satmar hasid, who was convicted of sexually molesting a teenage boy, is getting kosher food from a store in Queens delivered to his cell at Rikers Island, according to the New York Post –…
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