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Passover at Rikers Island: How the notorious jail complex holds a seder for Jewish inmates
(New York Jewish Week) — Miriam Tohill, a Jewish chaplain intern at Rikers Island, is looking forward to co-leading Passover seders for Jewish inmates this year for the first time. But conditions at the New York City jail complex are not ideal.
For the seders, held on the first and second nights of the holiday, some 70 to 100 inmates will be bussed from different parts of the island complex to a gymnasium that “feels like a high school gym,” said Tohill, 32, who uses the pronouns “she” and “they.” Sending participants to hunt for the afikoman, a hidden piece of matzah, is “discouraged,” she added, “for obvious reasons.”
The seder tradition of putting pillows on the room’s flimsy folding chairs, they said, is likewise prohibited. And while the door of the gym, rather than a door to the outside, will be opened for Elijah the prophet, they said, “the symbolism is obviously muted.”
Beyond that, Tohill added, it may be a challenge to create a festive mood. Corrections officers will be sitting on bleachers at the side of the room, which has a “squeaky floor, very tall ceiling, [and] terrible acoustics.”
Nonetheless, Tohill expects the seders at Rikers to be filled with meaning. She and others who work with Jewish inmates at the jail say that the holiday — which celebrates the ancient Jewish exodus from slavery to freedom — takes on a different resonance when celebrated by people currently behind bars.
“It’s both easier and harder to talk about slavery, freedom and hope when you’re incarcerated, but we’re all hoping for freedom and rehabilitation and growth in the future,” said Rabbi Gabriel Kretzmer Seed, Rikers’ Jewish chaplain. “People had beautiful insights about what freedom means to them, especially talking about how they feel free even when they’re incarcerated. I was very inspired by that.”
Seed, who received ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the liberal Orthodox seminary in the Bronx, began working as a chaplain at Rikers in 2018. The jail has been criticized for harsh conditions, which include evidence of inmates caged in tiny showers and sleeping on floors next to a pile of excrement. The complex has also been the site of suicides, beatings and more. Nineteen people died at Rikers in 2022 — the jail’s highest death rate since 2013, and the city is required by law to close it by 2027, though whether that will be possible is unclear.
Seed said that while Rikers can be a volatile and intense environment, it has also given him a sense of gratitude, highlighting the Jewish concept of teshuva, or repentance, and the idea that everyone deserves a second chance. Seed said Rikers’ Jewish inmates come from a range of religious backgrounds, from haredi Orthodox people educated in yeshivas to others who decided to explore their Judaism once they were incarcerated. He holds weekly services at the jail that draw up to 12 attendees; this week’s teachings discussed the concepts of freedom and slavery as a precursor to the seders.
“I’m kind of buoyed by those values,” Seed said, referring to teshuva. “When I’m having a rough day, I leave my office, go to a housing area, and people are just so grateful for even a few visits, a few minutes when I step into their housing area, or when I get to teach and engage with people, and that just lifts me up and reminds me why I do this work.”
Year round, Rikers Island offers kosher food, which is provided by the city. Seed and Department of Corrections officials would not provide specifics on where the food comes from, saying only that it comes from “different caterers.” And matzah isn’t only available on Passover: Jewish inmates eat the unleavened bread year-round at Rikers because it is a kosher food option that is easily available.
There are Orthodox volunteer groups that help bring kosher food into the jail, including members of L’asurim, a nonprofit that supports prisoners, and the Lubavitch Youth Organization, a branch of the Chabad Hasidic movement.
Rabbi Shmuel Tevel, who is active in the Lubavitch group, told the New York Jewish Week that he visits Jewish inmates regularly at Rikers and other prisons across the state. “For an inmate sitting in a prison cell in those darkest moments, in a state where they feel they’re at the end of their rope, they need to tie a knot and hang on,” he said. “That’s what we give them.”
The Lubavitch Youth Organization outside of Rikers Island doing outreach work during Purim. (Courtesy)
Ahead of Passover, his group is delivering 40 pounds of matzah, along with grape juice, haroset and vacuum-packed seder plates to some cells whose inmates won’t be allowed to attend the seder.
Zalman Tevel, Shmuel’s brother, who runs the group’s volunteer initiative at Rikers, told the New York Jewish Week that he spoke to a guard after visiting inmates during the holiday of Purim last month, and the guard told him the inmates were “in a better state.”
“They are closer to God,” he said. “It leaves a very good impact.”
Tohill described her work on Rikers, which includes working with inmates in other ways, in similar terms. Tohill said the work allows her to provide Jewish teachings in “a place that has so little space for joy, or God.” She compared the seder at Rikers to the tabernacle that the ancient Israelites built in the desert.
“We put all this care into it, knowing that it’s temporary, and we’re going to take it down again,” Tohill said. “We are in the wilderness and desperately need a place to meet Hashem. It is so temporary and imperfect, but that makes it even more worth putting the time into.”
For Tohill, co-leading the seders is part of their master’s project at the Union Theological Seminary, a traditionally Protestant seminary in Manhattan that now focuses on “training people of all faiths and none who are called to the work of social justice in the world.” Tohill’s project explores the meaning of Passover for oppressed people.
“I was in a position to ask, what does this Seder do for us spiritually, emotionally, communally?” Tohill said. “What does it promise to us if we have no access to freedom for people who are incarcerated? That became a big question for me, a theological question about what does this ritual do and how do we as Jews think about liberation?”
Tohill, who lives in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, said that some of the inmates have written about their personal stories and will share how they relate to Passover at the seder.
“We have congregants who have written poems about what sense they make of the Exodus story or of the four cups of wine,” Tohill said, referencing a central ritual of the seder. “We have congregants who have done drawings about their family that, to them, feel related to the Passover story in different ways.”
Requests to speak to an inmate planning to attend a seder, or to see inmates’ drawings or writings, were denied by the Department of Corrections.
Tohill called Rikers “a broken system” and said celebrating Passover feels particularly urgent there. They compared Rikers Island to “a floating trash heap in the middle of the ocean that we don’t want anyone to notice.”
“Passover is an opportunity to notice and ask who is being made invisible,” Tohill said. “The rest of the people in New York City who are not directly impacted by the prison industrial complex get to pretend it’s not happening. I would like to ask that, this Pesach, people take the opportunity to stop pretending.”
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The post Passover at Rikers Island: How the notorious jail complex holds a seder for Jewish inmates appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Gazans Stream Back Home as Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Holds
Palestinians gather to collect aid supplies from trucks that entered Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip October 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Thousands of Palestinians streamed north along the coast of Gaza on Saturday, trekking by foot, car and cart back to their abandoned homes as a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas appeared to be holding.
Israeli troops pulled back under the first phase of a US-brokered agreement reached this week to end the war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left much of the enclave in ruins.
“It is an indescribable feeling; praise be to God,” said Nabila Basal as she traveled by foot with her daughter, who she said had suffered a head wound in the war. “We are very, very happy that the war has stopped, and the suffering has ended.”
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Gaza early Saturday to observe the Israeli military redeployment, Israeli Army Radio reported, citing a security source.
He was joined by the head of the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), Admiral Brad Cooper, who said in a statement that his visit was part of the establishment of a task force that would support stabilization efforts in Gaza, though US troops would not be deployed inside the enclave.
CLOCK TICKING ON RELEASE OF HOSTAGES
Once the Israeli forces had completed their redeployment on Friday, which keeps them out of major urban areas but still in control of roughly half the enclave, the clock began ticking for Hamas to release its hostages within 72 hours.
“We are very excited, waiting for our son and for all the 48 hostages,” said Hagai Angrest, whose son Matan is among the 20 Israeli hostages believed to still be alive. “We are waiting for the phone call.”
Twenty-six hostages have been declared dead in absentia and the fate of two more is unknown.
According to the agreement, after the hostages are handed over, Israel will free 250 Palestinians serving long sentences in its prisons and 1,700 detainees captured during the war.
Hundreds of trucks per day are expected to surge into Gaza carrying food and medical aid, according to the agreement.
TRUMP EXPECTED TO TRAVEL TO ISRAEL AND EGYPT
But questions remain about whether the ceasefire and hostage-prisoner exchange deal, the biggest step yet towards ending two years of war, will lead to a lasting peace under Trump’s 20-point plan.
Much could still go wrong. Further steps in Trump’s plan have yet to be agreed. These include how the demolished Gaza Strip is to be ruled when fighting ends, and the ultimate fate of Hamas, which has rejected Israel’s demands it disarm.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump expressed confidence the ceasefire would hold, saying: “They’re all tired of the fighting.” He said he believed there was a “consensus” on the next steps but acknowledged some details still have to be worked out.
During the Hamas attack on Israeli communities, military bases and a music festival on October 7, 2023, terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and captured 251 hostages.
Trump is expected to visit the region on Monday and address the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the first US president to do so since George W. Bush in 2008.
Trump said he would also travel to Egypt and that other world leaders were expected to be present.
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Activist Laura Loomer Blasts Pentagon Over Planned Qatar Military Facility in Idaho
Laura Loomer arrives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Far-right activist Laura Loomer slammed President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday over its deepening defense ties with Qatar and made false accusations that spread on social media that the Pentagon was giving it a military base on US soil.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at the Pentagon earlier in the day, announcing that Qatar would pay for a facility at a US air base in Idaho. He did not say the US would give Qatar the base, or any base in the United States.
The facility, which has been in discussions for years, would support Qatar’s plans to train pilots on 12 F-15 fighter jets that the country is buying and which would be located there, a US official told Reuters. The facility would include hangars to shield the aircraft from the elements and a squadron operations building for the pilots, the official said.
U.S. TO SUPERVISE CONSTRUCTION
The arrangement, which the official said was in line with those agreed with other US allies, would result in the facility being built by local contractors under US military supervision and funded by Qatar. Pilots from Singapore already train at the US base.
“We’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatar Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho,” Hegseth said, alongside his Qatari counterpart.
Shortly after the announcement, Loomer said she did not think she would vote in next year’s mid-term elections.
“Never thought I’d see Republicans give terror financing Muslims from Qatar a MILITARY BASE on US soil so they can murder Americans,” Loomer wrote on X.
She posted a clip of Trump speaking in 2017, when he accused Qatar of historically funding terrorism “at a very high level.”
In the wake of her remarks, Hegseth posted on X: “To be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States — nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
Qatar’s embassy spokesperson said the facility in Idaho would not be a Qatari air base.
“Qatar has made an initial 10-year commitment to construct and maintain a dedicated facility within an existing US air base, intended for advanced training and to enhance interoperability,” Ali Al-Ansari said in a statement.
He said the arrangement was similar to existing programs the US has with other international allies.
Qatar is a US security partner and host to al-Udeid Air Base, the largest US military facility in the Middle East. It acted as a mediator alongside Egypt in talks between Israel and Hamas.
A self-proclaimed “Islamophobe” who for years argued the September 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job, Loomer has a history of provocative and self-promotional actions, including handcuffing herself to Twitter’s headquarters in New York in 2018 after the platform banned her for hate speech.
With 1.8 million followers on X and her own weekly program that draws a large audience, Loomer can say she speaks for many of the MAGA faithful and influences their views of the Trump administration.
In April, Trump fired US General Timothy Haugh, who was the director of the National Security Agency and head of US Cyber Command. The New York Times reported that Loomer had called for his ouster.
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Sinwar Memo Obtained by IDF Reveals Hamas Chief Ordered ‘Shocking’ Violence on Oct. 7
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar looks on as Palestinian Hamas supporters take part in an anti-Israel rally over tension in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, in Gaza City, Oct. 1, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
i24 News – A handwritten memo authored by late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar shows the arch terrorist’s instructions to his men ahead of the October 7 attack included orders to target Israelis with acts of violence that would shock and destabilize the country. Sinwar specified that the violence should be filmed and broadcast, according to a New York Times report on Saturday.
“Two or three operations, in which an entire neighborhood, kibbutz, or something similar will be burned, must be prepared,” the memo is quoted as saying.
Many homes were set on fire in the southern Israeli communities devastated by Palestinian jihadists on October 7, and acts of barbaric violence were posted to social media and live-streamed.
The document was discovered in the underground hideout of Muhammed Sinwar, who briefly served as the top Hamas official in Gaza following the killing of his brother before being killed in an IDF strike.
The NYT report cites a confidential analysis of the memo and of intercepted Hamas communications on the day of the attack by Israel’s Gazit institute, a think tank affiliated with Israel’s military intelligence.
“Hamas leadership planned and carried out an attack that featured acts of ‘extraordinary brutality,’” the researchers concluded. “Its aim was to cause great turmoil in the country and the military.”