A Prison Lesson for Yom Kippur

by Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah

As many of you know, during the past year, Jenny Goldfried Amswych, a 4th year rabbinic student at the Leo Baeck College, had her internship placement with me – that is, she pursued the practical side of her training by leading some services and other sessions here at our shul, and also by accompanying me as I went about aspects of rabbinic work that it is not possible to learn about in the classroom.

It was a very worthwhile and enjoyable experience for both of us, and reminded me of when I undertook an apprenticeship with Rabbi Henry Goldstein – now retired – of South West Essex Reform Synagogue, when I was a third year rabbinic student – twenty years ago now. Usually, rabbinic students in their third year go to Israel, but because I had lived in Israel for eight months a few years earlier, and had very little experience of Jewish communal life in England, it was agreed that I could do a special year-long apprenticeship with Rabbi Goldstein. At that time, rabbinic students in both their fourth and fifth years would go into pulpits solo, so I needed a bit more practical experience before I embarked on that challenge!

During the course of that year, in addition to leading occasional services and study sessions, I accompanied Rabbi Goldstein as he conducted weddings, burials, cremations, stone-settings, talks to groups in the local community, a Seder in a psychiatric hospital, and interviews with people wishing to become Jewish and soon-to-be married couples.

Towards the end of the year, Rabbi Goldstein took me on a visit to Chelmsford Prison. Until a huge fire there about eight years earlier, Chelmsford had been a maximum security prison. It was then reserved for young offenders – up to the age of twenty-one. Around the time we visited, the prison had been undergoing change once again, and had begun to admit older prisoners from the surrounding area, with a view to becoming a local prison.

Rabbi Goldstein served as Chaplain to the Jewish prisoners – always few in number – and at the time that we visited, a minority of one. Interestingly, the employment of prison chaplains is a statutory requirement, and ‘religious affiliation’ is included in the basic information identifying each prisoner. At Chelmsford at that time there were two part-time Church of England Chaplains, and one part-time Roman Catholic Chaplain. Chaplains for other religious groupings – chiefly Jews and Muslims – were drawn from among the Rabbis and Imams in the area, who made regular visits, the frequency of which was determined by need.

On the day of our visit to Chelmsford, Rabbi Goldstein was not expecting to visit any Jewish prisoners. However, one had just been admitted, and had asked to see a ‘Rabbi’, so Rabbi Goldstein spent some time with him. The purpose of our visit was to give me the opportunity to experience an area of rabbinic practise, which might possibly form part of my future work as a rabbi.

I recall that the apprehension I felt as we approached the prison was not so very different from the apprehension I had felt on other occasions during my apprenticeship. As usual, Rabbi Goldstein did his best to prepare me. But, as it turned out, I was not prepared for what I experienced – and have never forgotten that day. Nothing dramatic happened, but the experience affected me so profoundly that I wrote it all down. This evening, this special evening of Kol Nidrey, as we confess our failings and embark on our journeys towards atonement, and a new beginning, I want to tell you the story of that day.

As we drove into the car-park, the prison didn’t appear ‘threatening’ in the least; there was plenty of greenery, and the not very high perimeter wall seemed a fairly unremarkable remnant of a Victorian edifice. Once inside the first door, however, the feeling of the place changed dramatically: A heavy metal door slid firmly closed behind us, and another stood closed in front of us. We waited in that small blank space for only a few moments, but it seemed much longer. We were being scrutinised by an unseen camera, and ‘contained’ until our credentials were checked. Then the metal door in front of us slid open and we found ourselves in a shabby corridor, with a notice board on one wall and another metal door at the end of it. After a few moments, a chaplain greeted us cheerily, and led us through the next metal door and into the courtyard. As he strode across the courtyard, a heavy bunch of keys swing dully at his side. He was taking us, he said, to his office, where we would have a little chat before taking a tour of the prison.

The chaplain took us into his office – quite ordinary in every sense except for the bars on the windows – and he began to talk to us about his work, about the prisoners, about ‘life’ in the prison. It all seemed fairly unreal despite the metal bars and the succession of metal doors… I asked questions, and I waited.

After about thirty minutes, the chaplain, who turned out to be C of E, and also the vicar of the local church – decided that we were ready to embark on our tour. First stop was the chapel – a very pleasant wood-clad room. Apparently, it was usually packed on Sundays. Even ‘nominal’ Christians were very regular attendees – as the chaplain explained, it made a break from sitting cooped up in a cell; as a result of staffing cuts, most of the prisoners at Chelmsford at that time, spent over twenty hours each day in their cells.

After the chapel, we had a look in on the ‘Board Room’, where the Governor, Deputy Governors, Senior Prison Officer, Probation Officers and Chaplains meet for consultations – before bumping into the Governor and Senior Prison Officer en route to the cell blocks. ‘We don’t get many of your lot in here’, the Governor quipped; ‘too clever to get caught, I expect.’ I shouldn’t have been shocked by his remark. Stereotyping, endemic in society at large, provides the bedrock of a ‘closed’ system like a prison, in which everyone is classified and labelled. I remember shuddering as I thought about closed systems on a grander scale…

But there was no time to get side-tracked. A few more doors opened and closed before we found ourselves on the control platform at the heart of the prison. The cell blocks fanned out around us – four in all: the ‘Education’ block, far right; then the block for the older prisoners; next the one for young offenders; finally, far left, the block for three further groups of inmates: those undergoing ‘punishment’ for internal prison offences; those classified as highly dangerous – category ‘A’ prisoners; and those prisoners – usually sex offenders – in need of protection from other prisoners. By the end of the morning, I had been inside all those blocks, indeed, being inside two cells, and had a feeling of what it means to be ‘inside’, surrounded by walls and doors, doors which always seem to be shutting behind you, or only opening in front of you to pull you further in: Even on the ‘return’ journey through the prison, I somehow didn’t really believe we were ‘getting out’…

As we stood on the control platform surveying the cell blocks, I thought of the prisoners inside them, but more of the people who choose to work inside; unlocking and unlocking doors; overseeing the inmates. Apparently, a large proportion of those who enter the prison service are ex-armed services, especially ex-Navy – which isn’t really surprising: Hierarchy; discipline; order; and in the case of a ship, particularly, confined space. It makes sense. These people ‘fit’. But what about the prisoners: Misfits? Social outcasts? Disrupters of law and order – are they made to fit? Is that what incarceration achieves? Are they simply ‘contained’ for a while, or are they transformed by the experience? What effect does being ‘inside’ have on the average prisoner?

These were some of the thoughts going round my head before we started our tour of the cell blocks. I was thinking about ‘them’ – the inmates - and ‘them’ - the warders – all of ‘them’ very other, different form me, the student rabbi… And seeing them didn’t make things much better: The guards, inscrutable in their uniforms; the prisoners, especially the young ones, with their tattoos, and T-shirts, and jeans; so little individuality. And when we walked into a group of young men, having a few minutes break form work in the prison kitchen, I sensed an alien presence, which reminded me of young men in groups anywhere, only much more subdued.

It was only when the chaplain showed us one of the cells – empty because its occupants were working in the kitchen – that I got a sense of something else: Of two human beings, with their past lives, and their present concerns. The cell was tiny – about nine foot long by six foot wide – packed with bunk beds, a shelf-type wall table, personal belongings; and all of it perfectly neat and shining with cleanliness. The walls were covered with photos – of friends, family, girlfriends, and cars. Two small side-tables were covered with toiletries, all carefully arranged, and on a piece of string hung about ten half-used bars of soap – to make the cell smell nice. The two young men who shared that cell were lucky – they had work to do, so they didn’t have to stay in it all day. Instead, they’d made it into a ‘home’ to come back to; a place of their own, which they controlled; an opportunity for self-pride. I felt like an intruder in a way that I hadn’t felt outside the cell, in the rest of the prison: That cell was personal, and standing in it for a few moments saved me from the ‘system’, with is methods and defences. Perhaps, a world of different experiences separated me from the two men who shared that room, but they were no longer ‘inmates’, ‘prisoners’, they were people like me…

People like me – but how like me? The notice outside the cell-door indicated that its inhabitants were ‘inside’ for five and six years respectively. Young offenders don’t get prison sentences that long unless they’ve committed fairly serious crimes. I remember thinking – could I commit a serious crime? A century ago, criminals were thought to be people with a particular genetic make-up; they inherited their ‘criminal nature’. Nowadays, environment is seen as the principal factor determining criminal behaviour – both the environment inside the home and outside it: bad housing; poor schools, unemployment; pornography and violence in the media. And yet, not all the victims of a ‘bad’ environment end up committing crimes… It would be convenient to be able to fall back on the genetic argument, but there is no evidence for it. So, what we are left with is ‘criminals’ as people like ourselves, who share the same genetic code, and the same environment, as people who are not criminals. So what accounts for the difference between us? Is there a difference between us?

These were the thoughts I carried with me as I continued the tour of Chelmsford Prison; thoughts that were challenged and jerked out of comfortable ‘theory’ into reality when I walked into ‘A’ block. Rabbi Goldstein was having a private meeting with the Jewish prisoner. The chaplain led me casually into a part of the prison that was very different from the rest of it: The other blocks had newly white-washed walls; here it was shabbier, and the wire-netting across each landing indicated that inmates were less settled in this place…

The ground-floor was the punishment area, where prisoners spend time in solitary confinement – in bare cells, containing only an iron bed-frame; the mattress is put in at night. The chaplain opened an empty cell for me to see: It was very dark, with only a tiny window. People live in this place, I thought: An observation, confirmed by the meals list on the notice board in a side office, which indicated that almost half the occupants of ‘A’ block chose to eat vegetarian. I was curious about this incongruous detail, so the chaplain introduced me to one of the prisoners, who helped with the food: A swastika carved crudely into his forehead, he explained to me perkily that a lot of inmates chose to eat vegetarian because ‘the rest of it is rubbish’ – although he didn’t use that word. A simple explanation – not many of those available in that place…

The chaplain guided me to the first-floor landing – to the cells for category ‘A’ prisoners. ‘Would you like to meet the two lads doing the stamp project?’ he asked. I said ‘yes’, without really understanding. How could I make sense of it? ‘Stamp projects’ are for ‘well-brought-up’ industrious twelve year olds… He unlocked a cell door, and took me into a cell, identical to the one I had seen below, only the window was slightly larger, and there was a shelf-type table and two chairs. Apart from a transistor radio and two young men, there was nothing personal in the room. The iron bunks were bare.

The two young men looked up from their work as we walked in, and I realised that I recognised them – from their mug-shots in the young offenders block. All inmates categorised by the Home Office as highly dangerous, must be identifiable at all times – just in case of trouble. The chaplain introduced me, I said ‘hello’, and asked the young men about what they were doing, why they were doing it, how they felt about being ‘inside’, how much they thought about their ‘sentence’. They answered politely, but not stiffly; very subdued. They said they tended to live from day to day, but that they liked the job of sorting out the stamps because it gave them something to do and meant that they had each other for company. As we talked, I realised that I really did ‘recognise’ one of them: I had seen his face plastered all over the front pages of the tabloids. And had watched the TV news reports; they had gone on for several days. The ‘face’ in the newspapers was of a brutal rapist and murderer. Here was another face, but the same face; the same person. I felt cold; uncomprehending.

As we left, I wished them luck, and told them to ‘take care’ of themselves. The notice outside the cell door informed me that they were ‘Inside’ for ten and twelve years respectively… Pondering this, I asked the chaplain about rehabilitation programmes, psycho-therapy. I needed to know that apart from containing these young men, the years of imprisonment would be used for exploration and change. He told me that there was very little rehabilitation work at Chelmsford, but that one of the young men – not the one I recognised – was taking steps to rehabilitate himself: He had asked some weeks earlier for religious books to read – both men had been ‘inside’ for about nine months when I visited – and was steadily reading his way through the chaplain’s office library…

Why am I telling you all this? As I moved slowly out of the prison – through all those doors – and into the everyday world again, I knew I had taken something with me, and had also left something behind – left behind the neat categories and labels that protect me and all the non-prisoners in the prison system. What I had taken with me was more nebulous, and hard to assimilate. In fact I’m not sure – even to this day – what it is that I held inside me from that experience when I walked outside again – except that it is still there, and forces me to remember all the people in the prisons, and it makes me think about what people are capable of – not just ‘other’ people; not just ‘criminals’, but each one of us. And more than this, it helps me to understand, really understand, ‘in my bones’, not just with my head, what our Jewish tradition teaches us about our personal responsibility for our actions, and our capacity, not only to do wrong, but to make repentance:

Al Cheit shechatanu l’fanecha – For the sin that we have committed before you…
Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu – We have offended, we have betrayed, we have robbed…
Why do we make our confession in the plural form? Why does our confession include confessing to wrongs that the majority of the individuals who make up the ‘we’ have not committed? And ‘who’ are ‘we’? The last question is perhaps the most crucial. Franz Rosenzweig, the about-to-be-baptised-as-a-Christian, alienated Jew, who ‘returned’ to Judaism after attending synagogue on Yom Kippur, addressed this question directly, when he wrote that (The Star of Redemption, Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1985, p. 325):
…. ‘we’, in whose community the individual recognises his sin, can be nothing less than the congregation of humanity itself. Just as the year, on these days represents eternity, so Israel represents humanity…


In other words, on Yom Kippur, ‘we’ confess ‘our’ sins not as a special ‘we’ – Israel, Jews – but rather as a universal ‘we’, recognising that all of us are equal in our capacity for sin. And so, ‘we’ confess wrongs that as individuals we may not have committed, because we could have committed them… According to Jewish tradition, the world is not divided into ‘good’ people, and ‘evil’ people. Each one of us has the capacity to do good, and a capacity to do evil; each one of us possess a yetzer tov, a ‘good’ inclination, and a yetzer ra, an ‘evil inclination’. So each one of us is responsible for what we do; can choose to follow the ‘good’ or the ‘evil’ inclination within us. But more than this, having chosen one way, we can choose another; we can return; turn ourselves away from ‘evil’ and move towards ‘good’.

Al Cheit shechatanu l’fanecha – For the sin that we have committed before you… Whether or not we can identify some of our own wrong-goings in the litany of collective confession, we have committed wrongs – before God, and against our fellow human beings; both close at hand, and far away. We have committed wrongs, and when we admit this, if only to ourselves, we begin the work of ‘return’ and renewal. So, perhaps, as we gather here today, confessing our wrongs, making an effort to return, we might feel some kinship with those prisoners, who are also trying to turn themselves around – like that young man searching his deeds inside Chelmsford prison all those years ago; groping his way towards his better self. It is easier to label them ‘evil’; ‘criminals’; as people who are not ‘like us’. But, essentially, every ‘criminal’ is like us, and one day, when they have completed their sentences, they will return to live amongst us. It’s a risk. But we are all the risk that God takes. Today, we confess our wrongs, return, seek forgiveness and atonement. Next year, on this day, we will do so again. And who knows what wrongs we will need to confess next year…

Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu – We have offended, we have betrayed, we have robbed…


According to Chasidic tradition, a question was asked of a tzadik, of a spiritual leader:
‘Why on the Day of Atonement is the confession of sins given in alphabetical order?’
He replied: ‘If it were otherwise, we should not know when to stop beating our breast. For there is no end to sin, and no end to the awareness of sin, but there is an end to the alphabet.’

And this day, too, will end. Indeed, the day, like the confession of our wrongs ends, so that new life may begin again once more. What will we make of our beginning? May the experience of this day inspire each one of us to renew our lives. And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut
Erev Yom Kippur, 10th Tishri 5767 – 1st October 2006