Reflections on 5 years of Prison chaplaincy

I have never before voluntarily said goodbye to a job that had brought me as much personal joy and generated as much spiritual change within me as my 5.25 years of Chaplaincy at SCI-Phoenix at the end of December 2024. The irony lies in my never having begun a job with as little expectation of joy or spiritual growth as I did my Chaplaincy at SCI-Phoenix in October 2019.

In leaving I want to thank my chapel colleagues beginning with CDP Rafael Torres in awe of his endless patience with the endless bureaucracy involved in the job. I could not do what he does, and I couldn't have done what I did without his performing that job so efficiently and compassionately. I thank other long-term colleagues Jorge Lugo, Michael Comick, Mary Santana, Russell Gates, John Pidgeon, Imam Lateef (of blessed memory), Imam Sabir, Fr. Andrij Kovach, and newly arrived Rich Bergen. It takes a village, and we were a village -- a wacky village to be sure, but a village nonetheless. I thank them for engaging with me, teaching me about their own faiths, and allowing me to share what I know about how racism, chauvinism, patriarchal misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism form parts of the religious traditions we have inherited, and how we need to watch for them in our own thinking, our sacred texts, and the words shared among inmates and staff. I encourage all chaplains to read through the materials we distribute with an eye to the potential of any to intensify or encourage hatred of another group or population. Prison is a huge interfaith community, which fills it with both tensions and possibilities. My Phoenix colleagues of every faith gave me the courage I needed to be an out-of-every-closet SO Gay, Progressive Jewish Chaplain in a Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution, which is exciting, but not easy work.

I very much recognize the care and support of Deputy Superintendent Mandy Sipple with whom I felt a shared vision of what caring chaplaincy and programming could provide the men of our incarcerated community.

The aspect of prison that struck me most forcefully is the level of deprivation with which incarcerated people live -- something that only those of us who have spent time inside in one role or another have witnessed, and that the outside world simply does not comprehend. The degree of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual barrenness with which prisoners live is austere, and Chaplaincy has an unique opportunity to mitigate that.

Through leading religious services. certainly, but even more through my Jewish Studies Class and through building one-on-one pastoral relationships with inmates at Phoenix, I feel I have experienced God's holiness and grace, God's solemnity and humor, and the Divine curiosity at the core of God's human creations more at Phoenix than in any other rabbinical work I've done since my ordination 21 years ago. The incarcerated cisgender men and transgender women of all races and faiths whom I met at Phoenix were so ready to learn, contemplate, and (blessedly) argue about God, Bible, Prayer, and Theology. It was a genuine joy to be in holy conversation with them each week. I cannot tell you how much I will miss that in the future.

Another person whose individual contribution I want to honor was Jolene in the PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) department, who, with other staff and officers, coordinated the Pride groups for GBTQ folks imprisoned at SCI-Phoenix. I felt she and I were colleagues in our care and concern for the incarcerated Queer community and shared a recognition of how the legal and carceral system is woefully behind the times in imagining how best to exercise Care, Compassion, and Control for an unpopular and often menaced minority population (I speak in generalities) within prison walls. Recognition of self and identity, and an understanding that self and identity change over time but are valid in each phase -- these are, in Jewish terms, mitzvot, righteous obligations. That truth is something that I tried to teach not only to inmates but to staff, and I challenge all chaplains across the state actively to incorporate that concept into their chaplaincy. We as chaplains must never turn people away on the basis of their gender identities or sexual orientations. We need to be the people who help them reach God ba'asher hem sham, exactly where they are (Gen 21:17 adapted).

I finished this job as a better person, better rabbi, and better chaplain than when I began it. I bless God, the Holy One of Old, for this opportunity and the wondrous souls who helped me profit from my time.

PS - Both my parents, but especially my mom, would be very proud of me.