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A Jewish reporter goes inside Rikers for a new book on a notorious jail
(New York Jewish Week) — Reuven Blau, son of a Holocaust survivor, suggests his father may have inspired him to strive for change within New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail.
“There’s this subconscious drive to change things, or to help people in a way that you don’t understand,” said Blau. “Inside Rikers, you realize how difficult it is, and how terrible the circumstances are for everyone involved.”
A reporter for The City who studied at a yeshiva in Brooklyn, Blau is the co-author, with Graham Rayman, of “Rikers: An Oral History,” a new book on a jail that makes frequent headlines for the violence and despair trapped within its walls. The book seeks to humanize the people inside the jail — both inmates and the people who work there — and tell their stories.
Its aim, Blau told the New York Jewish Week, is to amplify the voices of “people who are rarely seen as people,” he said.
The jail complex, which opened in 1932, has long been criticized for its harsh conditions, which include horror stories of inmates caged in tiny showers, sleeping on excrement-smeared floors, suicides, beatings and more. Many have called for its closure since the 1970s. As of Dec. 14, 19 people died at Rikers in 2022 — the highest death rate since 2013.
Rikers Island, the jail complex located in the East River that has been open since 1932, is the site of a constant stream of violent news and headlines over the past few decades. (The City/Ben Fractenberg)
The reporters spent close to three years interviewing about 130 people, with most of the conversations taking place over the phone or in person with people already out of jail. They also made several trips to the jail complex.
One of the people they spoke with was Rabbi Gabriel Kretzmer Seed, a Jewish chaplain on Rikers. Seed spoke about singing Shabbat songs with an inmate who suddenly got up and punched him.
“He was a pretty strong person, but I only ended up with a bloody lip. He might have been mumbling something, but I don’t remember what he said specifically. I was quite shocked. Everything happened so quickly,” Seed said. “I was totally in shock because I had known him for a while and he was the last person I thought would hurt me.”
Seed then remarked that he was able to work with mental health staff and ultimately managed to have a good relationship with the inmate after the incident.
“It was such a revealing story, how there are people who are there to help others,” Blau said. “And they become aware of how people are misplaced there.”
Prior to joining The City, Blau had worked at the New York Daily News and the New York Post. Despite his deep reporting experience, Blau, 43, noted that it’s been “the weirdest thing” to become the “voice” of Rikers. “I’m this whole yeshiva guy,” Blau said. “I’d never been to jail. It wasn’t an issue I was familiar with at all in any way.”
Blau, who grew up in Denver and went to a yeshiva high school in Chicago, said that he remains observant. “Big cholent fan,” said Blau, who lives in New Jersey with his wife, Sara, who had a baby girl in May. “My favorite part of the culture is the social service network that exists in many communities.”
He fell into reporting after majoring in English at Brooklyn College. Before working for the tabloids, Blau wrote for The Chief, a newspaper dedicated to labor and local politics, where he covered the union that represents New York’s corrections officers, among other things.
In 2011, he landed a scoop with the Post about a “jailhouse bar mitzvah” which revealed that correction officers and supervisors attended a lavish Jewish coming-of-age cermony behind bars at a downtown Manhattan jail whose costs were carried by taxpayers.
“I always had some foot in the jail coverage,” Blau said of his time working in the news industry.
His co-writer, Rayman, covers criminal justice for the Daily News. Rayman told the New York Jewish Week that he doesn’t think people can read the book and “come away with a feeling that anything other than that particular jail system is deeply flawed and in need of major changes.”
The city is required by law to close Rikers Island by 2027, yet many are casting doubt over whether that will be possible.
“I really hope that there’s not a journalist behind me in 20 or 30 years that is writing about the same issues, because I think that means the coverage we’ve been doing hasn’t made an effect,” Blau said. “I look at it through that lens. I try to come up with ways that are going to change things for the better in a real meaningful way.”
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Israeli Ambassador Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism in Germany as Left Party Youth Wing Targets Jews as ‘Traitors’
Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, has warned of a rising wave of antisemitism in the European country, particularly from left-wing groups, as the youth wing of Germany’s Left Party continues to spread anti-Israel rhetoric and harasses Zionists, labeling them “traitors.”
In a new interview with the German news outlet Berliner Morgenpost, Prosor said that the local Jewish community is living in fear amid an increasingly hostile climate, noting that it is “better not to walk down Sonnenallee in Neukölln wearing a Star of David.”
“In 2025, Jewish men and women fear attending university or riding the subway because they are visibly Jewish. That schools, community centers, and synagogues require round-the-clock police protection is not normal,” the Israeli diplomat said.
Prosor also highlighted the growing threat of left-leaning antisemitism, saying it is even more dangerous than antisemitism from the political right or from Islamist extremists.
“Left-wing antisemitism, in my view, is even more dangerous because it masks its intentions. It has long operated on the thin line between free speech and incitement,” he said.
“Across Europe, this is visible on university campuses and theaters. Many present themselves as educated, moral, and progressive — yet the line separating free speech from incitement was crossed long ago,” he continued. “Israel is demonized and delegitimized day after day, and it is Jews everywhere who ultimately suffer the consequences.”
His comments came after Germany’s Left Party youth wing last week passed an anti-Israel resolution labeling the world’s lone Jewish state a “colonial and racist state project,” sparking controversy within both the local Jewish community and the party’s senior leadership.
During the Left Youth’s 18th Federal Congress last weekend, Jewish delegates reported being harassed by fellow party members — branded “traitors” and even warned of an internal “purge.”
According to local media reports, several participants left early after colleagues allegedly threatened to show up at their hotel rooms at night.
Now, the youth group is set to vote next week on a motion falsely accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, as well as another measure calling for support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate the Jewish state internationally as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Earlier this year, the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution — the agency responsible for monitoring extremist groups and reporting to the German Interior Ministry — designated BDS as a “proven extremist endeavor hostile to the constitution.” The agency also described the campaign’s “anti-constitutional ideology, which denies Israel’s right to exist.” That followed Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), last year classifying BDS as a “suspected extremist case” with links to “secular Palestinian extremism.”
Prosor in his interview condemned the Left Youth’s latest resolution and the harassment of Jewish members, saying “the red line has been crossed.”
“The youth wing of the Left Party is showing the true face of left-wing antisemitism, which would otherwise remain well hidden,” the Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
“By justifying terror, turning a blind eye to antisemitism, and denying Israel’s right to exist, the Left Party has abandoned its moral compass and integrity. All that remains is extremism, radical ideology, and violence,” Prosor continued.
Die rote Linie ist überschritten. Die Jugend der Linkspartei offenbart das wahre Gesicht des linken Antisemitismus, der sonst gut verborgen bleibt.
Mit der Rechtfertigung von Terror, dem Ignorieren von Antisemitismus und der Leugnung des Existenzrechts Israels hat die… pic.twitter.com/mNEmdNR0dp
— Ambassador Ron Prosor (@Ron_Prosor) November 7, 2025
Amid increasing political pressure to clearly distance itself from the youth wing, senior leaders of Germany’s Left Party are now facing growing scrutiny.
While the youth group is technically independent, it relies financially on the main party.
After meeting Wednesday night, the party’s executive committee issued a statement saying there was “broad agreement that the approved motion is inconsistent with the positions of the Left Party.”
“Antisemitism and the downplaying of antisemitic positions contradict the core values of the Left,” the statement read.
“Intimidation, pressure, and exclusion have no place in a left-wing youth organization, and even less in the political culture we uphold as the Left,” it continued.
However, intimidation of dissenting voices and anti-Israel rhetoric are not new within the Left Party, following a pattern of previous antisemitic incidents within the organization.
For example, Berlin’s former Culture Senator, Klaus Lederer, and other prominent members left the organization last year following an antisemitic scandal at a party conference in Berlin.
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Progressive Jewish groups say ADL’s ‘Mamdani Monitor’ is ‘Islamophobic and racist’
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Iran’s Water Crisis Worsens as President Warns Tehran May Need to Be Evacuated
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks during a meeting in Ilam, Iran, June 12, 2025. Photo: Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has endured an extreme drought in recent months, depleting the country’s reservoirs and leading President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn that the capital may even need to be evacuated.
“If rationing doesn’t work, we may have to evacuate Tehran,” Pezeshkian said last week, adding that the Iranian regime will start restricting water supplies in the city next month if there isn’t more rain.
According to Abbasali Keykhaei of the Iranian Water Resources Management Company, 19 major dams comprising 10 percent of the country’s reservoirs have run dry. In Tehran — a city with 10 million people in the city itself and 18 million in the metropolitan area — five dams that provide drinking water have hit “critical” levels, with one at below 8 percent capacity.
Hossein Esmaeilian, managing director of the Water and Wastewater Company in Mashad, the country’s second largest city with four million residents, told state media that reserves have fallen below 3 percent and that “the current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity.”
Esmaeilian added that “only 3 percent of the combined capacity of Mashhad’s four water-supplying dams — Torogh, Kardeh, Doosti, and Ardak — remains. Apart from Doosti Dam, the other three are out of operation.”
Iranian Energy Minister Abbas Ali Abadi has stated that “some nights we might decrease the water flow to zero.” He said on Iranian state television on Saturday that this was needed “so that reservoirs can refill.”
“If people can reduce consumption by 20 percent, it seems possible to manage the situation without rationing or cutting off water,” Esmaeilian urged Iranians, suggesting that those consuming the most would see cuts to their water supply first.
However, environmental researcher Azam Bahrami told German media outlet DW that “reduced consumption among the population is nowhere near enough to overcome this crisis.”
“One look at the water consumption pyramid shows that the agriculture sector consumes about 80-90 percent, the biggest share,” Bahrami continued. “As long as other sectors are positioned as priority … the water saving measures will not be very successful.”
The BBC reported that Iranian weather officials do not expect rain in the next 10 days. Mohammad-Ali Moallem, who manages the Karaj Dam, said that there was a 92 percent decrease in rain compared to last year.
“We have only 8 percent water in our reservoir — and most of it is unusable and considered ‘dead water,’” he added.
Stuttgart University researcher Mohammad Javad Tourian told DW about the rate of water loss Iran has seen in recent years.
“Iran loses a volume the size of Lake Constance almost every three years,” Tourian said. “In total, some 370 cubic kilometers have disappeared over the last 23 years. This means the problem is very serious.”
The question of a potential evacuation of Tehran remains unresolved. Former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi stated that fleeing the city due to the drought “makes no sense at all.”
Tourian identified actions that Iran could take to provide “rapid relief,” saying that prioritizing drinking water in key cities and the “temporary diverting of less critical usage” could be effective as quick, short-term steps.
However, actions to create a sustainable solution to the water crisis remain elusive.
While the Islamic regime in Iran struggles to quench the thirst of the Iranian people, its military reportedly remains stocked in its missiles targeting Israel.
“Our missile power today far surpasses that of the 12-day war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last week, referring to the regime’s brief conflict with Israel in June. “The enemy in the recent 12-day war failed to achieve all its objectives and was defeated.”
Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh likewise boasted of Iranian military might, saying on Monday that the country’s “defense production has improved both in quantity and quality compared to before the 12-day Israeli-imposed war in June.”
Last week, a US official confirmed that Iran had initiated a plan to assassinate Ambassador Einat Kranz Neiger, Israel’s emissary in Mexico City.
“The plot was contained and does not pose a current threat,” the official told i24 News. “This is just the latest in a long history of Iran’s global lethal targeting of diplomats, journalists, dissidents, and anyone who disagrees with them, something that should deeply worry every country where there is an Iranian presence.”