• Erika Davis, former Pursue temp and the blogger behind Black Gay and Jewish, published a piece on the Sisterhood blog this week about getting the Jewish community to deal honestly with internal racism. Recounting many experiences in which she has been perceived as an outsider in Jewish settings, Davis calls on the community to have this admittedly difficult conversation in order to make these experiences a thing of the past.
   
• On Monday, clergy and people of faith across the country will begin a 23 Hour Fast to End 23 Hour Solitary. Organized by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the fast coincides with the first-ever Congressional hearing on the practice of solitary confinement in prisons. To participate in this and other Torture Awareness Month activities from a Jewish lens, visit the resource page compiled by Rabbis for Human Rights-North America.
   
• AJWS’s recent Where Do You Give? National Design Competition, aimed at reframing the concept of tzedakah in the 21st century, recently named Chicagoan Doug Burnett as the competition’s grand prize winner. In articles for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Jewish News, Burnett, who is Mormon, explained how entering the competition has taught him about Judaism and his own role in making change: “I hope in some very small way, my talent can help other people, make some small change in the world and encourage other people to do things through advertising and design.” To attend the kick-off event for the competition’s mobile tour this coming Wednesday, June 20 in New York City, click here.
   
• While the Senate is deliberating on the 2012 Farm Bill this week, the Jewish community continues to amplify its voice in favor of food justice-friendly components in the bill. The Jewish Platform for a Just Farm Bill is now signed by 20 organizations, and the Jewish Petition for a Just Farm Bill–with approximately 18,000 signatures–was delivered yesterday to members of Congress. In addition, AJWS President Ruth Messinger had her letter to the editor of the New York Times about international food aid published this week.

• This year, the High Holidays fall during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. JWI (Jewish Women International), an organization that works to promote “safe homes, healthy relationships, and strong women” has, through its Clergy Task Force on Domestic Abuse in the Jewish Community, put together a multidenominational prayer to be read at High Holiday services. The prayer is a misheberach or healing blessing for families affected by abuse. JWI hopes that the prayer will open up conversation in the Jewish community: “When rabbis mention something in public, it signals that they are approachable and available to talk about the issue,” said Rabbi Richard Hirsh, one of the task force members.
• The execution of Troy Davis this Wednesday night has raised the acute need for reassessment of the death penalty as a form of punishment in our society. Repair the World’s blog posted an exploration of capital punishment and the need for reform of the U.S. justice system and prisons in the context of Jewish law. Despite instances of capital punishment in the Torah, the Talmud presents a much more difficult case for it: “The Rabbis… believed it was better to let a guilty man go free than to accidentally shed the blood of an innocent.” Click here for a reflection on the Davis case in relation to the month of Elul, a time when Jews traditionally seek forgiveness.
• On a related note, Uri L’Tzedek has organized a petition to fix the broken U.S. prison system. Over 35 Orthodox rabbis have already signed on to this call for prison reform based on the Jewish value of the dignity of all human beings. In particular, the petition expresses support for one national step toward action: a bipartisan, comprehensive study of the U.S. prison system through the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, a bill that was reintroduced to Congress this year. Uri L’Tzedek joins the over 150 organizations that have already voiced their support for the measure and calls on the government to prioritize the reduction of prison spending while making the system more safe, effective, and dignified.
• The Jewish social justice world has a new set of resources for contemplating our commitments to bettering our communities. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, a professor at American Jewish University, published a book this month called Justice in the City: Toward a Community of Obligation, which discusses how a just city would engage with its most marginalized citizens. In addition, he launched a blog at Justice in the City: Thinking about Judaism and Social Justice to continue the conversation in an ongoing way, with the first posts focusing on poverty and hunger in the U.S.

• As Americans scramble to prepare their taxes for Monday’s deadline, Ari Hart of Uri L’Tzedek offers his reasons why paying taxes should be a spiritual practice instead of a headache. He encourages us to take advantage of the heightened awareness of our money at this time of year to commit to ma’aser kesafim or “a tenth” – giving 10 percent of our post-tax income to support the poor: “Ritualizing giving in this way pushes us to really put our money where our mouths/values are.”
• Seeking alternatives to incarceration in our society is not just an ethical and practical concern; it also has extensive precedent in the Jewish tradition, noted Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz in the Jewish Week. The Bible itself warns that living in crowded, condensed spaces – like prison cells – contributes to the degradation of the mind, and so prevents any improvement during punishment. Yanklowitz promotes sustainable alternatives to incarceration reflecting “the Jewish commitment to human dignity even for those who have erred.”
• To prepare you for a truly justice-infused Passover this year, Jewish progressive organizations have prepared a rich array of Haggadah supplements, readings, table tents, and other materials to add to traditional seder rituals and storytelling. First read the JTA’s overview of how seders have become a platform for action, starting with the first Freedom Seder in 1969, then peruse the list below for resources on issues to bring attention to at your seder table:
  
  • AJWS – Haggadah supplements seder readings, Passover commentaries and text studies, table tents
  • Alef: The NEXT Conversation – responses from Jewish organizations about the 5^th question they would add to the seder
  • Fair Trade Judaica – how to Fair Trade your seder, including a Haggadah supplement and educational resources
  • Jewish Council on Urban Affairs – Haggadah for a Freedom & Justice Seder Celebrating Equality, Liberation and Human Dignity
  • Jewish World Watch – bookmarks reflecting aspects of the children who ask the Four Questions, urging the Biblical imperative to not stand idly by in the face of injustices
  • J Street – seder supplement to share thoughts and questions about peace, freedom, Israel, and the future
  • Progressive Jewish Alliance – food justice seder plate, Haggadah insert on modern-day deserts, tips for a “green & just” Passover
  • Rabbis for Human Rights-North America – table cards to tell the story of modern slavery
  • See Pursue’s earlier posts on Uri L’Tzedek’s Food & Justice Haggadah supplement and Marji Yablon’s additional Chad Gadya – or do it yourself!

There is something voyeuristic about watching prison documentaries. Or is it just me? I found myself unwittingly glued to the TV the other night during a special on female inmates. I felt a little sleazy, peering in at this sexually segregated space. But the curiosity was overwhelming. I suppose that we look to see how inmates will try to mimic social norms, searching for clues as to how our paradigms can be perverted and caricatured. Regardless, the show got me wondering about prisons, and women in prisons in particular. As I started to scratch the surface, I found that the questions multiplied like fractals. What makes the female experience unique? Male and female prisons are built virtually the same, so what marks a difference in the male and female experience? Since I’m charged with considering these matters from a Jewish perspective, what light does this tradition shed on the penal system?

In the United States, we imprison more people than in any other nation in the world. Though we only count five percent of the world’s population, we house over a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Of those, only 10 percent are women, but this marks an 800 percent increase in the past three decades. I won’t speculate as to why this is, but one obvious answer–that as women become less cloistered in the private sphere, they become more vulnerable to the economic pressures that prompt men to commit crimes–seems too easy. The vast majority of women in prison are non-violent offenders. Either way, more women are in jail than ever before.

We don’t jail anyone out of spite. For one thing, it’s way too expensive to feed, clothe, or house thousands of people for multiple years. And for another, it’s impossible to legally quantify revenge. So, setting aside the specific arguments as to whether or not prisons do any good, let’s simply posit what their theoretical purpose is: we send people to jail to rehabilitate them, to return them to productive form, and to heal what is essentially a wound in society’s side. Jails are a band-aid response to an illness in the human family. In the Torah, incarceration is notably excluded as a sentencing option. A criminal might be subjected instead to fines, indentured servitude, or corporeal punishment. In Jewish ideology, the criminal justice system exists to restore balance in society and benefit all parties, including the perpetrator. Isolation through incarceration is socially destabilizing, so it’s not on the menu. But Jews observe the laws of their host countries. So there are, in fact, Jews in jail in America.

I told a friend that I was going to include something in this piece about Jewish women in prison. He looked confused for a moment and asked, “There are Jewish women in prison?” (He then followed up by the obligatory “nagging their husbands to death” jokes.) Well, yes in fact. Contemporary notables include Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood madam imprisoned temporarily for money laundering and tax evasion, Sarah Jane Moore, the nursing school student incarcerated and later paroled for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford, and Mazoltuv Borukhova, the Queens doctor recently convicted of hiring a hit man to murder her husband. Apparently these and other women feel excluded and forgotten by the community. This strikes me as strange for a community of people who seem to live by a no-person-left-behind ethos. I kind of like that about us. But this convenient amnesia speaks to a communal shame, and also blindness to the fact that we are not a cohesive community of upper middle class Brandeis graduates. This is a multifaceted socioeconomic group. Prisons are deeply racist spaces. To pretend that we are not in the mix somehow doubles that racism back on itself.

But let’s take a step back to simply look at the conditions for women in prison. For one thing, most prison guards in the United States are male. The rates of sexual abuse and violence are appalling, and warrant a separate article. But that violence aside, what makes the female experience of incarceration different from that of a man? Pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnant prisoners are routinely shackled during gynecological examinations and even, shockingly, while giving birth. Relatively few states have laws banning the practice. Evelyn Jane Atwood’s photography and essays for Amnesty International speak eloquently on the subject. Looking at the image of a woman in the final throes of labor with her arms bound at the wrists, conjures up the ominous whisper, “They eat their young.” It is social cannibalism and it reveals an almost unspeakable fissure of misogyny in our culture. Not to mention that it makes a mockery of the proud American notion of being “born free.”

I had a mind-altering moment in my exploration of Judaism, when a Rabbi re-contextualized the “eye for an eye” dictum for me. It is not a punitive or retributive policy, but rather intended to keep punishment reasonable and equitable, and evolved as a counter-measure to harsh Sumerian policies. In Sumerian courts, thieves could have hands cut off and adulterers could be stoned to death. Yet, a recurring theme in many discussions of Jewish justice is mercy. There is no mercy in restraining a woman during childbirth and no wisdom in allowing it to continue.

Liz Lawler also blogs at The Jew and the Carrot.