The California prison system has 170,000 inmates, of which only one half a percent (850) are Jews. However those few Jews wield more influence than any other group.

Reason: they sue the state prison system if kosher meals are not prepared just right.

In 2003, California settled a lawsuit with Victor Wayne Cooper, a Jew serving a 60-year sentence for child molestation. Cooper sued state taxpayers for not providing him with kosher meals. As part of the settlement, Claifornia agreed to make kosher food available to inmates in all of California’s 33 prisons. A similar case in Texas is still pending.

After Cooper’s lawsuit, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation scrambled to install a Jewish chaplain at every prison to oversee the preparation of kosher food. Since 2006, the number of Jewish chaplains has doubled.

The work extends far beyond merely vetting jailhouse kosher cuisine. According to one Jewish chaplain, his niche is as close as a rabbi can come to performing missionary work.

(Jews can perform missionary work in Christian areas, but Christians are absolutely forbidden from doing missionary work in Jewish areas.)

Rabbi Lon Moskowitz sits on the California prison system’s Jewish Kosher Diet Task Force. He estimates that California Men’s Colony has some 35 inmates on the kosher diet plan. The Colony is the most pleasant of all California detention centers, and has the most Jews. It also has one of the state prison system’s only dedicated Jewish chapels.

One problem for Jewish chaplains is that there are different kinds of Jewish inmates, each with their own demands. Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis, said, “If you’re a Reform rabbi, you must work with Orthodox guys who want to put on tefillin. If you’re a Chabad rabbi, you must work with Jews whose Jewish identity is based on patrilineal descent.”

(So…not all Jews base their “Jewishness” on having a Jewish mother.)

Food in prisons is almost inedible, because prisons want to save money. Kosher food, however, has higher quality. Therefore many non-Jewish inmates claim to be Jewish in order to get digestible food. Part of the Jewish chaplain’s job is to prevent this.

“With the kosher diet, it became fashionable to be Jewish,” said  Rabbi Mendel Slavin, a chaplain. “I have to explain to non-Jews that eating kosher was not a privilege, but rather a requirement for those who truly were observant Jews.”

(In other words, let the Goyim eat slop.)

Slavin said working with Jewish inmates is a privilege. “I’ll help as much as I can until the Moshiach comes, and there’s no more Jews in prison.”

(The Moshiach is a Goy-killing Jewish uber-messiah.)

Source:

http://www.forward.com/articles/13492/
 

Submitted by Abdul Alhazred on Thu, 2008-06-05 04:39

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