Strengthening Within: A Visit to the Torah Wing of Ayalon Prison

Nothing prepares you for the moment the gates close behind you. You are not a prisoner; officers with ranks and one rabbi accompany you with formality, but prison is prison in every sense of the word. Your belongings, including your mobile phone, are taken at the entrance, you pass through heavy door after heavy door and stand at the end of the process inside, looking up only to see high walls, barbed wire fences, and watchtowers.

I feel suffocated. The people around me do not understand what the fuss is about. They are used to it. But my mouth is dry. I ask for a drink, and when they fill a glass for me from the tap water coming out of the nearby wall, I drink in panic, as if I won't be free to leave in a few hours like any other person. It's a slap in the face, even though at any moment I can turn around and say goodbye to everything. All the preparations I made vanish. I have only one question to ask the officer: How can someone live here? How does a prisoner survive the understanding that as soon as the bars are locked, he remains behind them for a year, five years, a decade?

The darkness that surrounds me when I think of the sentences and the pressure that rises in my throat is only eclipsed by the jarring experience when an older prisoner in his fifties passes by, pushing a cart laden with towels. I move aside automatically, and then I realize: they are all prisoners. The norm here is crime that has been judged and sentenced to severe punishments. I am the outsider in Ayalon Prison, the big brother of Neve Tirza, Maasiyahu, and Givon.

The regular citizens of this prison have been incarcerated for periods of over seven years. They are defined as 'dangerous.' Entry requires prior coordination, and details are entered into the system long before approval is given to cross the high walls and step into the wings. At the entrance awaits me the prison rabbi, Rabbi Chaim Brod. Together with him, I intend to tour the Torah wing, the small study house, and even the tzitzit factory within, where prisoners hand-spin threads meticulously.

After a careful identification check, the keys rattle. The rabbi asks to sit with me in his office, but for a moment I observe the unfamiliar space: a small garden with a patch of grass stands in front of one of the cells, a giant painting stretches on the opposite wall, a building painted in refreshing colors. For a moment everything seems so ordinary, another government institution built in a mandatory style, but a turret with a stretched barbed wire brings me back to reality. The flowers and brush strokes, crafted by the prisoners, attempt to create a multicolored backdrop for a gray existence.

"They do everything," explains an officer. "In fact, the prevalent rehabilitation concept in prisons today holds that the more the prisoners produce from themselves, the more they contribute and return to society." I wonder if they receive a salary or if they are simply slaves to the system, and he clarifies unequivocally that every effort is rewarded. But then he mentions that a network of sanctions and rewards is implemented to encourage them to go out to work, leaving them with few options. "You have to remember they're prisoners," says another officer. "A prisoner wants different benefits, like another hour during a visit or an open wing, and his way to get them is to be productive, a good prisoner in prison terms."

These are people whose freedom has been taken from them. The most basic existence—being able to go anywhere, sleep at any time, dial any number, visit anyone—is unfamiliar to them. This is an underworld of departments with prohibitions and regulations, schedules, rigid wake-up and sleep times, and the rules of the IPS. Suddenly it is a visit to the backyard of Israeli society, where the sun rises only when the prison warden wants it to rise.

Orange. Holy Books in Hell

And then, just when I thought I had seen it all, I encounter the Torah wing. Around a long table sit elderly people in a row. Before their eyes is an open holy book or prayer book, and their hands are busy with the mitzvah of tzitzit. Only the orange clothes under the *tallit katan* show they're convicts, some sentenced to decades. The factory commander passes between them with a serious look. In a few hours, a bell will ring, and after a count, they will be moved into the cells surrounding the wing and remain locked until the morning hours of the next day.

The Torah wing of Ayalon Prison is highly developed. The credit goes to Rabbi Brod, who has been with the IPS for thirteen years and treats the project as a mission of life. He is relatively young. A Chabad follower, though not in the role of an emissary (later I will meet a Chabad envoy in the synagogue, dressed in the traditional *frak* with a Messiah flag on the lapel and orange pants underneath. A prisoner). The rabbi roams in uniform, with ranks on his shoulders, and the prisoners stand up straight when he crosses the yard. His office tells of his sacred role. Along the walls are shelves laden with holy books: Talmud, Yalkut Yosef, Midrashim. He joined the prison service at the advice of his wife. Since his first arrival at the IPS, as a yeshiva student newly married with a rabbinical certificate, he has joined the revolution initiated by the prison rabbinate, Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Weisner, who brought religious spirit to the prisons. Before that, he served as the rabbi of several prisons, including Neve Tirza and Givon, and for the past three years, he has been in Ayalon.

What brings a young scholar to such a role?

"There is no greater mission than this," he answers in Chabad jargon. "Prisoners, no matter what their sin, are placed on the fringes of society in a difficult state. Sometimes their families sever ties with them. They feel humiliated and pained. Think about it: a prisoner entering prison has destroyed his loved ones and his life. Often they have also harmed him. I come and give him hope and the ability to rehabilitate his life. I give him trust in the world and a sense of worth. If it succeeds, it is redemption."

He speaks leaning forward, ready for the challenge. Enthusiastically detailing the wing's regulations, Torah classes, and the feedback he receives in the field. He gets up and pulls a booklet an inmate authored from the bookshelf. He is contagious. Captivating. The officers are full of praise. They admire him. And his labor bears fruit.

To belong to the Torah wing, a prisoner must comply with a series of regulations. Any deviation may invalidate eligibility and lead to a transfer to the general wing. For many prisoners, such a step is a disaster, and they will do everything to avoid it. One of the instructions requires prayer with a quorum: for early risers with sunrise, and for latecomers by half-past seven. For this, the prisoners receive a benefit: the morning roll call is as early as half-past four in the morning. Why is this a benefit? Because from the moment of the roll call, the wing is open all day long, unlike other wings, which are closed. In other words, a few more hours of freedom. Freedom in terms of a prisoner: an open doorway to a small, roofed yard, only a few dozen square meters in length and width.

And here are more rules: the rabbi decides if you study or work. If you work, he assigns you jobs - like a kosher supervisor - like it or not, and you must perform them. If you study, you are provided with organized hours, schedules, and even tests. Rabbi Brod shows me a certificate awarded at the end and explains that the prisoners - some never received a certificate in their lives - are excited by the document indicating they learned so-and-so tractates and even tested on them successfully. One prisoner, for example, cried at the ceremony. "His family is shattered since he entered prison. The children, the wife. He is full of heavy guilt. This achievement is significant for him." He rejoices, while I feel a lump in my chest.

The prisoners in the wing dine with *Badatz* kosher food. They submit a special request to the IPS, which submits it to a committee that examines their behavior. If found they purchased from the cantina - the internal kiosk in the prison - a product not under a strict kosher certification, it is denied. In general, hierarchy controls everything. The order is closely guarded. The study house belongs to the prison, and so does the synagogue. And the two rooms are separate. To hold a public Shavuot edification at the synagogue and thus leave the wing open overnight required special approval. By the way, it was granted and marked a small-scale history that the rabbi mentions to me.

Blue. In the End, You See the Sky

Some of the residents are familiar from newspaper headlines. They are imprisoned for speeding under the influence of alcohol, leading to loss of life, among other things. Do they place the crimes on each other's shoulders? "I always tell them no, that you shouldn’t judge a prisoner for the crime he committed, because, in fact, it is a second judgment," Rabbi Brod cautiously replies. "If he is in prison, then he has received his punishment. It is not your job to punish him again." But he also knows that recommendations are one thing and reality another and that murder is not the same as theft.

Nevertheless, the attitude in the Torah wing is more lenient. Perhaps because of the Jewish concept of repentance emphasized, the understanding that a person can return from his wrong path, the knowledge that although he sinned, he is not doomed to be a sinner forever. Perhaps because the population is carefully selected. Between the lines, it becomes clear that more than a few choose the Torah wing to avoid harm from prisoners in the general wings, which have a more diverse population.

Can a prisoner released after twenty years in prison return to society as a regular person?

"It's not simple," Rabbi Brod admits. "There are those incarcerated for serious crimes that society cannot contain. That is why they are here. But in the end, almost all return to being part of us." In the United States, prisoners can migrate to another country, but in Israel, most will live in the neighborhood they came from. "If we do not know how to offer them a horizon and the ability to be non-criminal human beings, we will be harmed. Our job is to offer them rehabilitation, to offer them repentance. Because if there is no repentance, if we do not allow a person to correct his bad path, then what did Hashem mean when He said, 'return to Me, and I will return to you'?" In light of the bars and the prisoners watching us with curious, envious eyes, all this sounds much more valid.

But until final release, visiting hours in prison create the window to the outside, and officers take advantage of this fact. A disciplined prisoner will earn a peak—a weekly hour. No more. For many prisoners, this is the only time they can meet with their families, and the IPS understands and does everything to fulfill the opportunity. Moreover, in recent years, welfare services in Israel have observed that the meeting is also essential for the children. "Even if the father is a criminal, it's better the son knows him rather than imagines him," a social worker explains. "Imagination is always harsher than reality itself." This consideration is taken into account when the IPS discusses the number of visiting hours, and sometimes prisoners even receive leaves due to this, subject to the IPS committee's approval and behavior.

And in the Torah wing, behavior is the exclusive metric that shows improvement. Does religious work rehabilitate more than academic studies or professional engagement? I inquire of the superintendents. Despite their bare heads, they reply affirmatively. Its effectiveness is proven. "There is no vacuum," one of them explains to me. "A large part of those who slide into crime does so because of difficult families, bad friends, inability to find work. Into this vacuum enters crime. They are drawn to it. Religious rehabilitation provides a good identity. A reason to wake up in the morning, to act, to achieve things. It builds an identity that distances from the criminal identity and aids in rehabilitation. When the prisoner leaves prison, he thinks of other things. His world is already composed of different considerations. We call this high-quality rehabilitation."

I was sent to the prison ahead of Passover to understand what freedom is, and I learned that I need to return before Yom Kippur because it is tied to repentance without separation. The prisoner is bound by his sin more than the prison restricts him. The sin holds eternal guilt, the fear that every person will always fear, the mistrust in him and his ability to become an ordinary person. Even I felt the anxiety that these criminals would one day be released and live near my home. This is the real prison, and repentance, as well as our faith in its ability, is the freedom from the sin for which the prisoner pays the price. The prisoner whose gaze does not stop accompanying me since I left the prison gates, and whose name I do not even know.

The article was first published in the "B'kehila" magazine. For a special subscription offer, for Hidabroot surfers,click here.