My Jewish Inmate Pen Pal

Aleph Institute, a branch of Chabad is kind to outreach to Jews in confinement. This is important work, can you imagine? Jews, living in confinement. Jews in the military, state hospitals, prisons and a host of other hidden places that can be tough to locate even if in words.

They offer one service in particular that speaks to me, connecting free world Yids with Jews in prison, nu? I requested a pen pal. Gevalt already, I am now in touch with a Jewish guy who is in a privatized unit in Florida. He is 56 and has been in since 1983. What do you say to a man doing hard time in galute-galute, double exile? I was sure I could find something to say and sent my first letter off.

It helps to note that I am not new to prison either and so requesting a pen pal makes sense to me. I left "corrections" after four years. I was employed as a counselor. I was approached twice to interview for a security position, ah no! They said I had the sense of humor and the no monkey business mind set. One time, they gave me an application. I am not capable of what it takes, to control others; what were they thinking? As it was, I was an oxymoron, a counselor in corrections. Like two angry lovers of the same unavailable man, they don't fit well together. I came to terms with much during my short stint inside. I saw how deprivation works wonders to starve us out of our minds.

As a professional (staff member), I was starved out of my mind. "Were all in this together," I would be told time and again. We were the same as they were, the inmates. I was hungry for intellectual peer support while in the face of so much emotional strife. I was denied basic professionalism that is critical to the helping professions. Imagine what the inmate faces when confronted with this double luck, isolation and time. I know, you don't care, you insist, they are Pariahs. You aren't thinking, really. I'll make it quick: they all get out one day. When they roll up, they are gone into the abyss of this free world, perhaps, even in your neighborhood. Everyone gets out in due time, that's why so many believe that crime pays.

As I became more secure in my work, I would tell my nay saying friends, hey Missy, whoa Buddy, don't panic but one of my clients can become your kid's husband, wife, partner, yes. Love, kids, tattoos (spider webs on elbows, a tear from the eye), all this and more. We are all finding our way in this new world where more of us are in than outside. Everyone gets out, to make room for the new ones, the young ones, coming up in this modern time where dental floss and batteries in a sock become weapons.

Being a creature unlike any other, I have been proclaiming in community that I have this new pen pal. We were in the kitchen were great conversations begin. The Rabbi was the one to ask if they pair us according to our gender. He doesn't want me to meet and marry the criminal. Write to him, maybe, look him in the eyes, not a chance. I sense that the Rabbi likes me and he wants me to find my match. Not in prison though, gevalt already, nu, can you see it? My response was swift, no they don't. I guess you can request a same sex pen pal, but who the "H" would? The Rabbi and the others who can have assumptions about gender asked me from what seemed like fear. They are afraid for me, that I could fall in love with him. They can imagine that he will be released and that he will come for me and kill me even if he is not in for murder.

He would bind me to him in some fantastic and anti social way, that would compel me to transfer all of my debt into his name and steal his heart away in my confused and upset state, in my alone-ness. Would that be so bad, I joked. I mean, transfer my debt into his name, now there is an opportunity in where I could beat the odds. I want to transfer my debt into some thing.

When I insisted that I could not fall for such grace, these friends all with raised eyebrows, begged me to say more. Like a good prison movie, people crave knowing about what can't been seen otherwise. Well, I began, in the free world, our gender roles are set amass in stone. Men either adopt patriarchy or are viewed as sensitive, weak, Gay and unmotivated. Women must act tame, coy, pleasing and can be labeled harsh, manly, power hungry and Gay when they are not preoccupied with meeting the needs of others, men, yet are focused. In prison, it's opposite. Everything is in reverse of how it is outside. In the free world, we are led to believe that we are free, that the world is a place of limitless bounds. I n prison, we are tied to a structured course in time.

Inside, gender roles are opposite, not confused. Men present weak, emotional and needy. Women are experienced as strong, unaffected and want less. The images can be compared: men will piss and moan about one thing or another, a privilege revoked can cause a man to cry. A woman in the same situation will fill that new empty space with the company of her prison family. She will focus on getting stronger for it. By going into her family of sisters, she will thrive in spite of the authority that revoked her privilege by denying her the opportunity to be other. She can be seen smiling and glowing, arms around her sisters, smug. The differences in the two worlds doesn't stop with gender. Race too does time. In prison, they pity the white man. Oh, are you white? You poor man you. Race is an issue in prison, only because it is in the free world. The opposite world of race inside is more compelling though. No doubt, Blacks are on top. From there stems a mirror image of what we live in the free world only turned on its head. Prison life is much like the real world only in opposite fashion with color leading the run. Black then Brown skin inmates take command. Asians are next and the lowly White man is albeit alive on the bottom, he is the foundation on which all others stand. Like pay back time, Mr. White Man has got to watch his back, because it isn't worth much inside.

Don't get me wrong, a white guy can move up on this ladder of discontent and he does it through his opposite gender role, not his race. He has to become submissive and he must please who ever wants him and for keeps. This mixes race and gender while it keeps slavery alive in our lives. It is really something to sit with such a man and provide an ounce of care and concern for him, for his well being and growth.

When I worked with women, I wanted to be reassigned. I recall thinking, I'm only doing this for the money, the money, the money. I need the money, my mind would not stop justifying my being there. My fears were personal, I wondered if I could cross over and "be a man" if ever I had to. During those times, I did well to learn what I could to understand my own gender, my sex and if I had a place in my race; what it meant to be in the spot meant for me. Oh, don't get me wrong, I can think mean and nasty, but could I do more.

Could I protect myself from a vicious and hardened hand? Could my hair really be yanked from my head, exposing my skull, yes I agree, it could. During the conversations at shul with the Rabbi and teachers, I explained how it can happen that the same experience and treatment can have such polar opposite affects on the genders due in part to the way we thrive as individuals and as members of a group. Men in not refusing patriarchy are hell bent on material wealth and consumptions of goods and services. Women know to depend on each other, to build community and to foster close emotional bonds. We could care less for stuff if given no choice because we know that men as a commodity can come and go. Terrified of divorce as it reeks of failure not to say that a really good divorce can separate men from their identity as providers, of what; we can never be sure. As long as we continue to democratize male privilege, we can't wonder why Johnny and Mr. Smith aren't happy. In prison, there is no privilege for men unless you consider traffic and trading the opportunity, a good prison rape is now a love affair too. I want to say, geez, fellas, will ya, make nice. For once, please just make nice and I don't. Talking about invisible violence is like begging to taste one's own blood, it's not kosher.

Aren't I afraid that he will get out and come find me, no. "What's he in there for, a white collar crime, let's hope," the teachers are so kind. I appreciate their willingness to accommodate, to want to see that things are not as bad as they actually are. These educators can teach me a thing or two about faith. My idea of faith is a good outpatient surgery, a procedure. Some Jews, many religious Yids appear to believe that there is a difference between white collar and other crimes. I hear it often in my meanderings. I inside, there is no difference, except of course, child molestation and child rape. It's common knowledge, right? Oh, you didn't know that, sorry.

The bottom line came when I explained why a male pen pal was a better fit for me, how I wasn't preoccupied with fear of his release and his locating me once out if he in fact rolled up. I mentioned again, the dynamics in the opposite world and how in life, I prefer the emotional responses from women than non communicative commitment that men can maintain beyond years. If I had to choose in life, in my free world existence, to support a female friend through a tough time, tears a river and struggle with a man as he confronts the patriarchy that he dreads, I would drown in her tears. In prison, I repeated, a man is more female in his coping. A woman is most masculine in her surviving. Remember, a man will cry at the drop of a hat, a woman can pull the teeth right out of your head and enjoy them as sprinkles on her ice cream cone. You can sit there and watch her as she bites down and you may wonder about the cone, sugar or wafer. Given such subtleties, which would you prefer to get mail from, to write to and to think about, a man who is scared of life or a woman is scary? Thanks, I'll keep the pen pal that was assigned to me.

Now that I am no longer working in the system, I am reading more prison writing then ever. Prison writing is different than most in its sense of finality. There is a reporter who asked the officials at Sing Sing if he could shadow a guard for a day or so, to write an article. They said, "No." This mild mannered reporter had it in him. He applied for the position of Correctional Officer and went to work inside Sing Sing to get the information that he was hoping to find in a two day visit inside. For a year, went to work at Sing Sing as a Corrections Officer. His writing does more to document our failure as a society than it does to seek prison reform. We cannot address prison reform until we reform our free world. This is why I look to prison, it is a closed cell, a mirror of what we live in daily, save the small spaces and the Johnny Sacks. My prison pen pal helps me remember my humanity and he can recommend a good book now and again as he too is an avid reader. He reminded me of Thomas Friedman who wrote From Beirut to Jerusalem. Only, it is Longitudes and Attitudes that I am considering now.

In this season, my mental health is not what I wish it were. I feel trapped in a sense and as a result, it has become hard to correspond with him, my pen pal. In his third letter, he wrote out his daily schedule. At times the activity was in 15 minute segments. I would not know what to say about what I do in a 15 minute block of time. I would not know what to say about a fifteen minute block of time in my day. Yesterday, I had a panic attack married to rage and as a result, I was frozen stiff in tears. I left work, the external factor. I fled to higher ground. I went to a place one can go while preparing to be unemployed again. I knew I would have to quit the job.

At his job, he is a house keeper. He mops floors per his assignment inside. I could use a floor mopping and as I consider that, I walk past the kitchen and look at the curtains. Ah, they are so unlike the floor. They just hang there, moving slightly as the air pushes through the space. The floor needs something that I won't give it today as I think about work and my pen pal. He mops floors, day in and day out.

There are no subtleties in my view, only dramatic over tones, hues of colorless shade. What makes us do what we do? How is that I am slowly going nuts? If the crime was mine and I was down for hard and long would I write to me? I sent a note to the Rabbi asking him for help. I was feeling very alone and depressed, in shock and unable to stop the internal voices. I asked him for a referral. He referred me to a PhD he knows. She got me in the next morning, as a favor to him. I am now in touch with the State's Mental Health Department and in Texas that is like going to a BBQ where there is no meat or beer and no Willie Nelson singing low down behind the dream. It isn't very good and the idea is more than less when I consider needing the kind caring support of the State's Intake Worker assigned to me.

My pen pal does not get visits. He said he doesn't want to be observed by security, put other people through that. I have sent him a few birthday cards, like cake, more than once piece. I wanted him to see Texas' great rag, "The Texas Observer," and so, I mailed him the whole monthly broken up into sections of five pages each and sent them in five different envelopes the way they told me to, when I called the prison mail room for the rules and regulations regarding sending printed materials to offenders. I think the Prison System is in bed with the Postal Service, licking each other's stamps to death.

I wonder if he has gotten the envelopes. There can be such delays in prison mail delivery. One good lock down and the whole place goes bust. Lock downs are akin to our natural disasters, just stay home, don't leave and be quiet, wait and wait some more. Eventually, The Warden gets it out of his system and bango, we can all go back to our lives, living in fifteen minute intervals. When I toss it out there, I got a letter from my pen pal, people say, "I don't want to hear anything about it." I try again, I say, he recommended a book that you are reading, he plays chess! Friends will actually ask me to be quiet about my postal niche in letters.

In my Texas, I do conform now. It took a few years to learn that like in prison, behaviors matter out here in the wide open spaces of my wanderings. The Rabbi asked me if I knew that the Police Chief of Blanco was a Jew, I did not. My pen pal asked me if I wanted to know anything in particular about him, I did not. I want to know what ever he wishes for me to understand of him, from his life and world. The Police Chief shatters my misconceptions about small town Texas, the pen pal reinforces my belief that every one's story is cut open and like a good avocado, its pit is exposed and slippery even when we think we have nothing to say about who we are.

When you want to remove the pit inside an avocado and get to the meat, you have to use a sharp knife. It is best to steady your hand and look into the center of the seed, see into the core and slam the blade down. In this culinary dream, who among us would not wish to be both seed and the meat, the knife and the core? Getting past what needs doing is itself a chore. Time will tell which of us can make it through with out damaging the blade of our lives. For me, the pen pal and the Rabbi with the teachers are essential when I begin to feel like salad again. I can recall so much with so little and am alive. In reaching out to him, my Jewish pen pal, I have returned in part to myself and the relationship between the two is closer than you think.