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Jan. 12, 2007
Looking for a new life
Jewish prisoners seek comfort in the community.
KELLEY KORBIN
Think of every cliché you know about prison life and it's
probably true: you can buy almost any drug you want in jail, sexual
predators are the lowest of the low and, perhaps worst of all, most
offenders are not at all prepared for the outside world when they
are released.
But the one thing you might not expect is that there are at least
20 self-identified Jewish inmates in British Columbia's federal
penitentiaries, serving time for the most serious of crimes, like
robbery, murder and even sexual assault.
Itzchak Marmorstein sees himself as a rabbi who has the opportunity
to shine the light of Torah through the bars of prison cells into
a place where there would otherwise be spiritual darkness. For the
past six years, Marmorstein has been contracted as a chaplain for
Corrections Canada. He travels the province monthly, meeting with
Jewish inmates at various institutions. And while the inmates are
no doubt criminals, Marmorstein sees them as human beings first.
"What I've seen is that you can have a couple of bad days or
just one bad day and that's it for the rest of your life,"
he said in an interview with the Independent. "One of
my guys set out to do a robbery and, in the heat of the moment,
it became a murder."
Despite the fact that his "guys" have forfeited some of
their rights to privacy by committing felonies, Marmorstein is careful
to protect their identities and personal information. He explained,
"You don't want to embarrass or stereotype someone. They already
see themselves as a criminal. The challenge is for them to see themselves
as a good person who's made some mistakes and done some bad things,
but that doesn't mean they're a bad person for the rest of their
lives."
However, Marmorstein did acknowledge, "It's a little harder
with murder because it is an eternal act that, in a sense, you can
never overcome, but once they've, quote, 'paid their debt to society'
or suffered their consequences, then they're entitled to have a
chance to be a person without the label – because that label
feeds itself and they find it hard to transcend their condition
or their experience."
Marmorstein said his role is unique in the prison system. He describes
it as "informal counselling" and said he counsels each
inmate in whatever way works best for them. With some, they put
on tefillin and pray together, with others they just talk. He always
brings his guitar to his meetings, along with books for the inmates
that he gets from the American organization Jewish Prisoners International
and he never forgets the chocolate – because "Somebody
once told me, 'Here in jail, chocolate is better than sex.'"
Marmorstein seems to have an uncanny ability to connect with these
men, despite their rough exteriors and jaded world views.
"The advantage I have," he noted, "is that I don't
represent the system. I'm not like a professional from the prison
system and I don't have any power in it, either.... I don't have
any power over them, so they can be honest with me. When they're
speaking to their parole officer or they're speaking to a psychologist
or whatever, in a certain way, they're guarded, because everything
can be used against them; where I represent an opportunity to share
in a context that gives them a little bubble outside the system
– even though I sometimes have to talk to them through the
windows of their jail cells if they're in lock down."
Dennis Walstrom was released from Mission Institution three months
ago, after spending 26 of his 47 years behind bars, mostly for committing
bank robberies. He was raised as a Jew, but abandoned his religion
when he left home as a teenager and started to get into trouble.
Marmorstein helped bring him back to Judaism.
"A couple of Jewish guys in the institution, we started a group
and we got the rabbis to come out and it was all beneficial,"
said Walstrom in a recent interview. "Having the rabbi, having
a connection to our Jewish faith and the Torah, it really made a
difference in the daily mundane life that I lived in. It helped
me not wake up every day being miserable and not get caught up in
things. That was from the Torah.... If you lived in the very negative,
very violent environment that I lived in, I think finding something
that made your day a bit better really went a long way. For me,
it was the group, us Jewish guys doing our prayers every day and
having the rabbis [Marmorstein and his predecessors Rabbi Solomon
and Cantor Nixon] come in."
Most of the inmates Marmorstein sees have addiction and/or family
dysfunction issues. He said they really don't know any other life
but crime and it is very difficult to break the cycle. "I've
seen people who get out [of jail] and, a month later, they're back
in," he said. "It's hard to handle the freedom and they
don't necessarily have strong support on the outside, so they end
up going back to what they know, which is often robbery."
Walstrom can certainly relate. He described his release as "a
lot of shock value, seeing how things are out here, a lot of things
have changed." But Walstrom is determined not to return to
a life of crime; he plans to spend another three months in his halfway
house and then get to work and get settled in his own place. But
he is counting on support to help him get there.
"I have friends and I have the rabbi, who I talk to weekly.
He talks to me like I'm a person, you know. We laugh and we joke.
With the rabbi, I don't have to be on guard because he's not judging
me."
Another recently released inmate, David Gelfant, agreed. He said
that when he was in jail, "I trusted Rabbi Itzchak implicitly
and he loved me until I could love myself. He's a very beautiful
man - he's my favorite person on the planet. He's integral in my
integration and my recovery. He's very open and not judgmental.
No matter what, he loved me and tried to steer me in the right direction.
He knew I was high all the time and he knew it was bad, but he loved
me anyway. He tried steering me towards my family and I'm in touch
with them now and that's thanks to him."
Marmorstein has also learned something from the prisoners. "It's
given me an appreciation for the situations that people can live
in," he said, "and it's given me a different perspective
on my own problems and, in a certain way, an appreciation for the
Canadian system. It's more civilized than the United States."
Although Marmorstein does acknowledge that the Canadian system is
trying to help former inmates integrate, he said that, unfortunately,
the needs of these individuals are so great and the system is so
tapped that many released inmates get lost in the cracks.
Or Shalom Synagogue and Vancouver's Jewish Family Service Agency
(JFSA) are helping a little by providing some emotional and financial
support. But, according to Marmorstein, it's not nearly enough.
Gelfant said that more than food or clothing, what he needs to stay
on track is an education. The 33-year-old, whose baby face belies
his 16 years behind bars, was recently released from Mountain Institution.
Although obviously intelligent and articulate, Gelfant never had
an opportunity to pursue post-secondary education in prison and
he knows that the key to his integration into society is education.
"I have my Grade 12," he said, "I can learn, I'm
intelligent – but I have no idea about life and how to live
without crime, how to not be institutionalized."
Gelfant's life started its downward spiral when his mother left
him at six years of age. She turned to a life of prostitution and
he never saw her again. Gelfant's stepfather took custody of him
but the two had a rocky relationship that often ended up in violence.
They held it together long enough for Gelfant to attend elementary
school at Winnipeg's Talmud Torah and have a bar mitzvah, but when
he turned 14, his stepfather threw him out of the house and he became
first a ward of Manitoba Jewish Family Services and then he was
in foster care until, thanks to some break-and-enter and theft charges,
he ended up with the unfortunate distinction of being the "first
Jewish kid to grace the halls of the Manitoba Youth Centre."
From there, Gelfant's life went from bad to worse. He became addicted
to drugs and to "crime, money and drinking." He entered
the cycle of the revolving jail cell door that Marmorstein talked
about, reoffending every time he was released from jail – mostly
due to the fact that crime was the only vocation he knew.
"In prison, I can see opportunities and I can make money and
I can make things happen," he said. "When I'm out, the
world's pretty chaotic, and I know the opportunities are there but
I can't see them. It's almost like it's a whiteout. I feel unqualified
and stupid, so I self-sabotage."
Gelfant, who suffers from degenerative disk disease and has spent
time in a wheelchair, has approximately 80 convictions on his criminal
record. He was so entrenched in the criminal lifestyle that during
his brief periods out of jail, he even managed to "rob some
banks" from his wheelchair.
But today, Gelfant is "five months clean and sober." He
said he hasn't been out of prison for this long in "at least
a decade" and he is determined to make a go of it.
"What I know," he said, "is I don't want to go to
jail and I want to stay sober and I don't want to hurt anybody,
including myself, anymore."
That's a tall order. Life on the outside is difficult for a guy
who grew up in prison. As he put it, "I got along pretty well
in prison.... I could navigate the stream pretty well. I get along
well with most people and I had most of the dope."
In contrast, Gelfant was released with the clothing on his back
and nowhere to live – because his crimes don't qualify him
to live in a halfway house – but he did manage to "beg"
to get a voluntary position in a Salvation Army halfway house downtown,
where he hopes to remain for the next couple of months.
Right now, Gelfant is living on $42/week, a stark contrast to the
thousands of dollars he said he made in jail selling drugs.
Gelfant said his Judaism "went away for quite a while,"
but he has rediscovered it with the help of Marmorstein and he now
considers himself a very spiritual, if not religious, man.
But religion isn't the only thing that has helped Gelfant on the
road toward recovery. Under Mountain Institution's cat program,
Gelfant acquired Little Miss, the kitten he credits with saving
his life. He explained, "She made me human and she gave me
unconditional love that I could feel and reciprocate and I couldn't
resent her for anything, whereas everybody else that ever cared
about me, there was conditions behind the caring and I could always
resent them and blame them for things ... [having an animal] gives
you responsibility and makes you become selfless. It gave me feelings,
something to love. I needed to be her toy, her food, her cleaner,
her love, everything." Little Miss was released from prison
with Gelfant and is now being cared for by Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan
of Or Shalom.
Cat sitting is only one of the things Or Shalom has given Gelfant.
He tries to attend services most weekends and said the community
there seems to know who he is and accept him – earrings, tattoos
and all.
"A lot of the bubbes there are very welcoming," he said.
"Or Shalom is much different than synagogues I remember. It
is very open and loving and spiritual."
The synagogue experience is one of the only things that Gelfant
has been willing to accept from the local Jewish community.
JFSA's director of basic resources, Lisa Rubin, said that although
the organization "doesn't have the capacity in funding and
resources to do outreach" to clients, their services are available
if Gelfant comes to them. JFSA counts housing services, a counselling
department, vocational aid and a food bank among its offerings but,
as yet, Gelfant has not contacted them.
He said this is because of his own guilt and feelings of unworthiness.
"I've got no problem asking the federal government for help,
but when it comes to the Jewish community, because I left it for
so long and I did become the black sheep, I have a hard time asking
for help."
Nevertheless, Marmorstein feels that the Jewish community is precisely
where Gelfant and other released inmates should be asking for help
and he said the Jewish community should respond to its obligation
of pidyon shvuyim, redeeming the captives. He would like
to see a committee formed in what he calls "extreme makeover"
style, with a lawyer, a psychologist, a doctor and a resource person
to help secure housing, furniture and clothing.
Anyone interested in discussing the needs of released Jewish prisoners
can contact Marmorstein at [email protected].
Kelley Korbin is a freelance writer living in West Vancouver.
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