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Fearless or foolish? Michael Roth, Wesleyan’s Jewish president, stands apart in opposing Trump’s campus policies
As he often does these days, Wesleyan University president Michael Roth recently delivered a lecture on another campus outlining all the reasons why academia should be more forcefully standing up to President Trump’s policies.
He peppered the lecture with Yiddish words. He laid thick on what he called his “Jewish accent.” A colleague came up to him afterwards.
“You’re doing Jew-speak,” they told him.
Roth laughed recalling his response: “No s–t, Sherlock. That’s part of what I’m doing.”
What he’s doing, Roth told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a recent interview, is constantly reminding his potential critics who he is. For one, he’s the only university president in the country who openly, repeatedly rejects Trump’s claims that the administration’s campus crackdowns — rescinding grants, limiting international student visas, dismantling “DEI” — are a means of fighting antisemitism after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
For another, when his own school dealt with pro-Palestinian encampments last year, he made no secret of handling the matter diplomatically instead of through discipline — an approach that landed other university presidents in hot water, but not him.
And above all that, he’s proudly Jewish.
“If you’re going to accuse Wesleyan’s administration of being antisemitic, start with me. But don’t call me on Saturday,” Roth quipped. “Because I’m going to be in Torah study.”
Roth isn’t quite sure how he, the leader of a small-town Connecticut liberal arts school with a mere 3,000 students, became so unusual among his profession by defending what he sees as the central principles of academic freedom.
“It’s a bit of a puzzle,” he told JTA. “I don’t think my view is very original. Any of the presidents I know at different schools probably have similar views.” His views also seem to align with most American Jews, at least according to polls, which show that nearly three-quarters of them also believe Trump is using antisemitism as an excuse to attack higher education.
In recent days, two other Jewish presidents, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown University, have publicly rejected a Trump administration offer of “priority” funding that would have required them to bar some forms of speech, making them the only university leaders to do so. But Roth still stands out in the lengths he is going to rebuff Trump’s higher education policies — and to center his Jewish identity in doing so.
There he is, accepting a “courage award” from the literary free-speech group PEN America “for standing up to government assaults on higher education.” There he is, giving interviews in which he lambasts “prominent Jewish figures around the country who get comfortable with Trump, it seems to me, because they can say he’s fighting antisemitism: ‘He’s good for the Jews.’ It’s pathetic. It’s a travesty of Jewish values, in my view.”
There he is, signing an open letter declaring that antisemitism “is being used as a pretext to abrogate students’ rights to free speech, and to deport non-citizen students.” The leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group that has been suspended from multiple college campuses for disruptive protests, were on that letter. So was the leader of Wesleyan University.
And there he is, telling JTA that so-called institutional neutrality positions, adopted by a range of universities amid the Israel-Gaza war (and supported by the Jewish campus group Hillel International), are “bogus.”
Pro-Palestinian encampments at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, May 9, 2024. (Screenshot)
A representative for the American Association of University Professors, a faculty union that has dropped its former opposition to boycotting Israel, praised Roth’s presence on the national stage.
“Michael Roth is criticizing the misuse of Title VI to define anti-semitism as criticism of Israel and its weaponization in the campaign to attack higher education. There is nothing startling about that position,” Joan W. Scott, a Jewish researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study who sits on the union’s academic freedom committee, told JTA.
Scott added, “I’d say Roth’s reasons for his courageous stance have to do with his integrity and perhaps his knowledge of history. He doesn’t want to be among those who, like Heidegger, thought that appeasing the regime in power was a safe position to take.” (A spokesperson for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus free-speech advocacy group that supports institutional neutrality, declined to comment on Roth.)
Roth’s profile has caught the attention of some Jewish families, including that of Mason Weisz of White Plains, New York, who said Roth was one reason that his son is a first-year at Wesleyan now. Weisz recalled hearing an NPR interview with Roth in April, after admissions decisions were out but before seniors had to pick their schools, as particularly pivotal.
The interview “in which he argues that Trump’s use of antisemitism to justify his strong-arming of universities actually is bad for the Jews, encapsulates everything I appreciated about Roth.” Weisz told JTA. “Here is a university president who is willing to risk going on record against the administration, again and again, to fight for academic integrity. He has a nuanced view of world events, an appreciation for true debate, and a fearlessness that I hope are an inspiration for Wesleyan’s faculty and students.”
Roth also earns good marks from some Jewish students on campus.
“He does care about Jewish students. He’s someone who does take their concerns seriously. And compared to other university presidents, he’s been better,” said Blake Fox, a Jewish senior at Wesleyan who identifies as pro-Israel and serves on the campus Chabad board. “He wants to be the ‘cool’ president.”
Fox says he had a good experience as a Jew at Wesleyan, in part because the encampments there never felt threatening (he noted the protest movement was much smaller at Wesleyan than it was at other schools). That was due, at least in part, to Roth’s efforts to peacefully negotiate an end to the encampments.
Yet, Fox said, the president — whom he’s met several times — was also deeply concerned for the well-being of Jewish students. In meetings with Fox and other Jews on campus, Roth vowed to take action if any protesters ever threatened a Jewish student by name.
He also appreciated Roth standing up to Trump, particularly on issues of campus speech. “I’m pro-Israel, but I also support the First Amendment,” Fox said. “Even if there are individuals whose speech is bad, targeting them for deportation is a dangerous precedent, I think.”
The campus of Wesleyan University, July 24, 2013.(Joe Mabel via Creative Commons)
Though a historically Methodist school, Wesleyan today has no religious affiliation and enrolls around 600 Jewish students — nearly 20% of the student body. There’s no Hillel, but the school’s Jewish community includes a full-time rabbi, student leadership, dedicated Jewish residential housing, and a unique, modern sukkah that has won architecture awards. The Wesleyan Jewish Community rabbi declined to comment for this story.
There’s also a Chabad outpost, which opened in 2011. Its director, Rabbi Levi Schectman, told JTA he was “grateful for the open door to the President’s office and for the strides that have been made so far,” adding, “There is still more work to be done so that all students feel heard and safe.”
Schectman also said the Wesleyan Jewish community he interacts with is “living and thriving”: A recent “Mega Shabbat” gathering drew what he said was a center record attendance of 175 students.
And then, of course, there’s Roth, the school’s first Jewish president, who has held the post since 2007. A free-speech scholar, he’s published books about the campus environment, including one called “Safe Enough Spaces.” He grew up in a Reform household on Long Island and has written essays on Jewish identity, but considered himself “only modestly observant” until his father died 25 years ago. After that point, he said, he “began saying Kaddish and subsequently attending Torah study.”
Nowadays Roth makes a point of involving himself in Jewish campus life — all forms of it. He spent Rosh Hashanah with the affiliated Jewish community, and, last year, caught a Shabbat service held at the pro-Palestinian student encampments.
The latter group wasn’t too thrilled to see him there, he recalled; they’d been targeting him by name, often in insulting language. But he wanted to learn more about the Jews who were participating in the protests right outside his office. When one of them, an Israeli, personally apologized to Roth for the aggressive behavior of other encampment participants, he invited the student to his office and they had a long chat. “There were so many interesting conversations,” he said.
Michael Schill, President of Northwestern University, testifies at a hearing called “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos” before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2024 in Washington, DC. University leaders are being asked to testify by House Republicans about how colleges have responded to pro-Palestinian protests and allegations of antisemitism on their campuses. (Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images)
Of course, many Jews in academia know that merely being Jewish cannot protect oneself from charges of enabling antisemitism. It didn’t save Northwestern University president Michael Schill, who — like Roth — is a free-speech scholar who tried to deal with his school’s encampments through negotiation instead of by force.
In so doing, Schill was hauled before Congress and lost the confidence of many of his Jewish faculty, staff and alums. The heads of the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federations of North America, both Northwestern alums, publicly aligned against him. Last month, Schill announced he was stepping down.
Roth doesn’t know Schill personally, but said he thought it was “just terrible” he had resigned. “I found it very sad that the board didn’t come to his defense in a way that allowed him to continue,” Roth said.
He acknowledges he’s in a better position to speak out than the heads of other universities, where hospitals and major research centers are more reliant on federal funding, and where instances of antisemitism had been more prevalent pre-Trump.
Schools like Columbia have made significant concessions to Trump, including on antisemitism issues, in exchange for having their funding restored. Harvard, after initially putting up resistance to Trump’s demands, has now reportedly entered a negotiation phase; the University of California system has also been targeted for a $1 billion payout to the government. Last week, the Trump administration unveiled what it said was a new “compact” that schools would be required to sign to secure their federal funding; the demands include one to protect conservative viewpoints on campus.
Is Roth worried that Trump could turn on Wesleyan next?
“Didn’t I say I was Jewish?” he responded, laughing. “Am I worried? Of course I’m worried. I’m a worrier… I would hate to put Wesleyan at risk.” But, he said, that wouldn’t stop him. “I have three grandchildren. I want them to grow up in a country where they don’t have to be brave to speak up.”
Now, as the two-year anniversary of Oct. 7 nears, Roth’s name is also on some things other Jewish leaders wouldn’t touch.
He spoke to JTA while on the road to a literary festival in Lenox, Massachusetts, co-sponsored by the left-wing magazine Jewish Currents, which has emerged as one of the loudest voices in Judaism to oppose both Israel and communal American Jewish support for it. He would be appearing onstage with the journalist M. Gessen, who has compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to Nazi Germany.
Roth told JTA he hadn’t known that Jewish Currents was a co-sponsor when he agreed to take part in the festival. But, he added, it wouldn’t have changed anything about his appearance. He’ll talk to anybody Jewish. He’s appeared on their editor Peter Beinart’s podcast, and a while back he submitted a piece to the magazine that was rejected (“I guess it was insufficiently anti-Israel,” he mused) and wound up running in the Forward instead.
He sees his own views on Israel as moderate. While he called for a ceasefire in March 2024, far earlier than many others in the Jewish world, he still refuses to call the Gaza war a genocide and remains adamant he supports “Israel’s right to exist.” He only blames Israel for what he said were the security failures that led to the Oct. 7 attack, which he had condemned immediately as “sickening.”
He takes Israel’s wartime behavior to task for “paving a path for egregious war crimes and a level of brutality and inhumanity that I never would have associated with the country.” Yet he remains “stunned,” even today, by what he called “the lack of basic sympathy, empathy, for the victims of those horrific murders” of Oct. 7.
“I pride myself on being realistic about the persistence of antisemitism,” he said. “Still, the callousness with which some people greeted those horrors was very disturbing.”
Yet when the encampments came for Wesleyan last spring, and some of their participants accused him directly of being complicit in genocide, Roth — unlike nearly every other university president — opted to negotiate with them. He wrote a piece in the New Republic declaring that he would not call the police, even though he knew the protesters to be in violation of some campus policies.
Even in that piece, he offered an ominous prediction: “My fear is that such protests (especially when they turn violent) in the end will help the reactionary forces of populist authoritarianism.”
Roth didn’t like many of the phrases his own campus protesters used, including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Yet he forcefully defended their right to say it, angering some Jews on campus as a result.
“I try to have it both ways,” he said — weighing his principled views on both Israel and protest. This can sometimes lead to very intricate needle-threading. He recalled how, when an address he gave to prospective students was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters unfolding a banner, he let them continue and even acknowledged the banner before pressing ahead.
Fox does take issue with some of Roth’s stances, including his opposition to institutional neutrality.
“I think he fundamentally misunderstands what institutional neutrality is,” Fox said. “We don’t need to hear your views on Ukraine. We don’t need to hear your views on Israel.” Having the school president call for a ceasefire, he thought, is “alienating both sides of campus.”
More significantly for his job, Roth has long opposed the movement to boycott and divest from Israel. This has angered activists at Wesleyan, who, like those at other schools, have made divestment a central demand.
Last spring, in order to peacefully break up his school’s encampment movement, Roth had promised protest leaders they could make a case to the board for divestment that fall. When the board opted not to divest, a small number of protesters became angry and attempted to take over a university building.
“They were not very civil to my staff members,” Roth recalled, describing the protesters as basically daring him to take action.
That time, he did call the cops.
—
The post Fearless or foolish? Michael Roth, Wesleyan’s Jewish president, stands apart in opposing Trump’s campus policies appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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ADL and JCPA clash over teachers union, exposing a divide over how to fight antisemitism
(JTA) — Two leading Jewish civil rights groups stepped up after Jewish teachers reported antisemitic harassment last year at the National Education Association’s annual convention, only to devolve into disagreement ahead of this year’s convention.
The unusual public dispute between the Jewish Council of Public Affairs and the Anti-Defamation League brought to the fore a simmering tension over how to fight antisemitism within schools and unions. Should Jewish groups promote collaboration with the institutions on solutions — or prioritize confronting them over their failings?
Two days before the assembly, the JCPA and the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus heralded new rules and policies it had developed in collaboration union leaders to “ensure the safety of Jewish members and educators at the [Representative Assembly] without undermining the union’s vital commitment to free speech and democracy.”
A day before the assembly, the ADL, which had worked with caucus members over the past year, told Jewish Insider in an unusual line of attack that it was “extremely frustrated about a so-called ‘agreement’ with JCPA that was reached without all NEA JAC leadership and delegates at the table.”
It also took aim at union leaders: “NEA’s inconsistent enforcement of its own protections has sent an unmistakable message: Jewish educators are not a priority. That must change now.”
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, responded to the ADL’s criticism in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“When you can’t criticize substance, you find reasons to criticize process,” Spitalnick said in an interview. “In this case, we’re both very proud of the substance and the process, and the results underscore that.”
JCPA has emphasized working directly with school leaders and public officials to combat antisemitism, and opposed the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus pro-Palestinian protests.
“It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism — on campus, in our communities, and across the country — without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive,” the group wrote in an April 2025 joint statement condemning the crackdown.
That letter spurred behind the scenes pushback from another legacy group, the Jewish Federations of North America.
The ADL, meanwhile, has taken on a more confrontational approach to universities, assigning them “report cards” for campus antisemitism and also empowering Jewish educators to advocate for themselves.
Notably, progressive-leaning groups like the JCPA and centrist groups like the ADL and the JFNA flip strategies when it comes to addressing Trump administration policies that undercut Jewish civil rights advocacy. The centrist groups have at times retreated from confrontation with the government, while the JCPA has been more directly critical. In one instance, the JCPA was more outspoken about a Trump administration attack on the ADL than the ADL was.
“There are absolutely those on the right who think that we should just be burning it all down, and that is not an approach that’s going to make you safer or democracy safer,” Spitalnick said. “We believe deeply that the only path forward is one that confronts antisemitism wherever it exists, and does so in a way that recognizes our safety as Jews is tied to our democratic institutions, which includes unions and public education.”
The ADL and the JCPA found common cause last year after the NEA delegates narrowly passed a measure barring the union from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the ADL, which boasts a comprehensive library of anti-bias education materials. (The measure was ultimately rejected by the NEA’s board of directors.)
The JCPA at that time signed onto a letter led by the ADL describing “deep concerns about the growing level of antisemitic activity within teachers’ unions,” including reports that Jewish teachers were verbally accosted during the proceedings.
The harassment, including a reported case of NEA members appearing to cheer at a mention of the 2025 attack on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, during the convention last year, last month sparked a new antisemitism investigation into NEA by the Trump administration.
Shira Goodman, the ADL’s vice president of advocacy, said in an interview the group “immediately had to take an adversarial advocacy position to address” last year’s conference.
The ADL centered its approach on engaging with Jewish teachers who had sought their help, including the incoming president of the Jewish Affairs Caucus. Goodman said that while the ADL had “some ongoing conversations with leaders at the NEA,” the bulk of its advocacy had been to “support teachers who are doing their own advocacy.”
“Working just with leadership wasn’t going to do it, but we also wanted to be there to support grassroots folks who felt like they wanted to be and remain within their union,” Goodman said.
Goodman added that she did not feel that JCPA and the ADL were working “in tandem.”
“JCPA has said publicly that they have relationships with AFT, with NEA. Different organizations in the Jewish community have different lanes and do different things,” Goodman said. “I just want to make sure that the teachers are represented, and that if somebody is speaking for the teachers, that the teachers have been part of that.”
Spitalnick said JCPA had engaged with JAC leadership and other Jewish organizations, including the ADL, throughout the negotiations with NEA. Last year, JCPA also led a workshop at NEA’s annual convention about antisemitism.
“All I could speak to is our approach, which has been to — instead of hammering the union with constant critique and framing a sort of zero sum dynamic in which it’s the union versus the Jewish community — making clear that the union’s success and Jewish safety, inclusion, are one in the same right, and that has led to the partnership we have with NEA,” Spitalnick said.
The ADL and other legacy groups have in the past expressed qualified support for Trump administration disciplinary actions targeting educational institutions. Spitalnick was adamant that was the wrong course, including in the most recent government investigation into the NEA.
“The question that everyone should be asking is what is motivating this, and at a time when we’re seeing – whether it be Republicans in Congress or others — use our real fears of antisemitism to fundamentally try to kill the unions by going after their charter and their fundamental existence, I would ask real questions about the motivation for this investigation,” Spitalnick said.
The ADL, meanwhile, wrote in a post on X that the federal government’s investigation “underscores what many Jewish educators have been saying for the last two years: no union member should be made to feel excluded, targeted, or unwelcome because of a core part of their identity.”
Alyson Brauning, the outgoing chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus, who had collaborated with JCPA ahead of the convention, said the difference between this year’s conference earlier this month and last was “night and day.”
“I actually got to enjoy parts of the [Representative Assembly],” Brauning said. “Our table did not experience any harassment or intimidation in the hall at all. It was actually enjoyable and fun, and we got to do the business of the RA on the floor.”
Naomi Rodriguez, the incoming chair of the Jewish Affairs Caucus who had participated in the ADL’s “Hazak” program, said she “wasn’t aware” of all the work that JCPA had done behind the scenes ahead of the assembly.
“Maybe Alyson was, and she is the chair of the caucus,” she added. “As the incoming chair, I’ll be more on top of those things.”
Rodriquez, who is currently participating in a JCPA cohort to support teachers, said that as the incoming chair she would “accept support from anybody who wants to support us.”
‘This issue with antisemitism is a huge problem, and it’s only getting worse, and I really think we all need to work together, and collaborate and coordinate to ensure that we are as effective as possible in fighting it,” Rodriguez said.
In a statement to JTA, an NEA spokesperson said that the union had “enhanced our work to counter antisemitism and ensure all of our members are respected and supported.”
“That effort included extensive consultation with the Jewish Affairs Caucus, Jewish NEA members, and partners in the Jewish community, including the JCPA,” the spokesperson said.
Following the assembly, which took place in Denver from July 3 through 6, the ADL as well as several other prominent Jewish groups that had also lent support to the Jewish Affairs Caucus published a statement saying that the results of the assembly “provides reason for optimism.”
“We commend the important steps the NEA took to foster a more inclusive Representative Assembly this year,” the groups wrote.
They added a caveat: “Yet that experience does not yet reflect the reality facing many Jewish educators in their own communities. We continue to hear from educators across the country who report marginalization within their unions, hostile rhetoric, intimidation, and exclusion…That reality requires continued attention and action at every level.”
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations also joined the ADL’s statement, which did not include JCPA.
The JCPA “chose to have their own press release in the beginning and kind of break with what we had already decided as a group, and so that was why they weren’t part of this press release,” said Stephanie Hausner, the Conference of Presidents’ chief operating officer. The JCPA, like the ADL, is a constituent member of the conference.
Hausner said she felt the dispute between the organizations ahead of the conference “took away from the real issue at hand, which is how do we support Jewish teachers.”
“For the last year I’ve been working with all the organizations on this work, and I really thought we were in that place, and I hope that tomorrow we can get back to that place where everyone’s working together because I do think that it is better for the Jewish community,” Hausner said.
The ADL and JCPA “sometimes reach out to different audiences,” she said, but “in an ideal world, we all speak from the same notes and be able to to move together and work together on a regular basis, and we wouldn’t have some of this going on, some of this back and forth.”
“There are no two organizations that operate in this space and do things exactly the same,” Hausner added. “Hopefully, some of their efforts can complement each other moving forward.”
The post ADL and JCPA clash over teachers union, exposing a divide over how to fight antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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JD Vance tells Joe Rogan that Jeffrey Epstein had ‘connections’ to Israeli intelligence
(JTA) — Vice President JD Vance claimed that the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the “highest levels” of Israeli intelligence.
“He clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels, of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence,” Vance told Joe Rogan, one of the country’s most popular podcasters, in a three-hour interview released Wednesday.
Vance also told Israelis purportedly behind attacks on his efforts to broker a ceasefire with Iran to “go to hell.”
The remarks from Vance, who described himself as “one of the O.G. Epstein conspiracy theorists,” marked a notable embrace by a Trump administration official of theories about Epstein’s ties to Israeli intelligence, which have proliferated in the years since his death and often have veered into antisemitism. No evidence supports the claim, and Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former prime minister, last year publicly denied allegations that Epstein worked for Israel or its intelligence agency.
During the interview, Vance went on to theorize about Epstein’s ties to Israel, particularly his ties to the Israeli political left. Epstein had an association with Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister. Barak, whose politics in recent years have veered to the center, has denied wrongdoing and said he regrets the relationship.
“As much as I know, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu, not a particularly popular person in the United States of America right now, Epstein seemed to be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center,” Vance said. It was not clear what Vance meant by “deep state,” a catchall frequently deployed by right-wingers peddling conspiracy theories.
Vance continued that, in the United States, Epstein was “connected across the board, he had Republican friends, he had Democratic friends. He had much deeper connections to the Israeli left of center than right of center. I don’t know what that means.”
The interview with Rogan was not the first time that Vance had flirted with conspiracy theories about Epstein.
“I am frankly kind of a conspiracy theory on the Epstein stuff,” Vance told the hosts on “The View” last month. “I think that it’s crazy that you have this guy who is clearly a sex predator who is hanging out with a lot of wealthy and powerful people.”
During the interview with Rogan, Vance also said that there was a “separate conspiracy that hasn’t gotten covered as much,” saying that Epstein was the “tax guy” of Les Wexner, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist whose decades-long relationship with Epstein has shadowed his philanthropic legacy.
“I think there’s an underreported, underexplored story of, was Epstein doing a lot of tax stuff that was not on the up and up, and is that one way in which he gained blackmail,” Vance said. “It’s not opposite of the sexual blackmail story, but in some ways you could imagine both things being true.”
Epstein’s relationship with Wexner has been extensively reported. Wexner, too, has denied wrongdoing and said he cut off relations with Epstein after learning about his misconduct.
“There’s so much bulls–t out there,” Vance said, referring to a recent report that Israelis are behind a paid campaign to discredit the Iran deal he brokered last month.
Vance said he did not care if Israel or any other country tried to influence outcomes — it’s “the nature of the beast,” he said — but was irked by Americans he claimed were taking Israeli money to oppose the deal.
“Many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, you know my response to that is ‘Go to hell!’ I’m going to do what I have to do for the American people,” he said. “I represent Americans first.”
Vance’s deal with Iran, which has come under fire for its unprecedented concessions to the country regarding its role in controlling Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz, is in abeyance. Trump resumed the war against Iran this week.
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The first synagogue inside a U.S. prison reopens — no conviction required
As prisons go, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was unusually luxurious. For one, it had flush toilets — beating out even the White House in making the upgrade, museum exhibit developer Beth Tinker told me on a recent tour.
But if plumbing reflected the penitentiary’s commitment to prisoners’ physical well-being, its biggest innovation was more spiritual. Eastern State housed the first synagogue inside a U.S. prison, complete with a Torah ark and ner tamid, or eternal light. That restored sanctuary — a short walk from gangster Al Capone’s former cell — is now newly open to the public in a museum exhibit, Freedom through Faith: Judaism at Eastern State and Beyond.
“It’s a place really of humanity, when you’re not getting a lot of humanity in this space,” Tinker said.
The synagogue, founded in 1922, hosted holiday celebrations and weekly Shabbat services. Outside volunteers brought in kosher meats. A circus performer visited and provided entertainment. After a prisoner gave birth to a baby boy, they brought in a mohel and held a bris.
Compare that level of institutional support with modern-day prisons, where there are often multifaith chapels, but a separate, dedicated space for a synagogue is rare, according to Rabbi Joseph Kolakowski, the first full-time Jewish chaplain in the history of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
The exhibit comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling that makes it more difficult for prisoners to obtain a remedy when their religious rights are violated. Last month, the Court ruled that a Rastafarian man, Damon Landor, could not sue prison guards for monetary damages after they forcibly shaved off his dreadlocks, which he kept as part of his faith. When he entered the prison, Landor carried with him a copy of a 2017 court decision that required the Louisiana Department of Corrections to honor Rastafarian religious practices — which a guard threw in the trash, according to court records.
But while Landor couldn’t sue the guard, the Supreme Court did agree that Landor’s rights had been violated. His case led the Louisiana Department of Corrections to update its prisoner grooming policy to prevent similar violations.
Eastern State, meanwhile, was accommodating Jewish religious practice decades before those legal protections existed, Tinker said.
“That’s part of what makes this synagogue and this Jewish congregation so amazing, is because they didn’t have to do it, legally,” Tinker said. “It was able to not just sort of secretly start up, but thrive.”
The synagogue’s history
Eastern State didn’t exactly start as a model of restorative justice. Opened in 1829, the state-funded prison pioneered solitary confinement in the U.S., with the idea that solitude would force prisoners to reflect on their sins and find redemption.
That philosophy shaped the prison’s design. A wagon-wheel shaped, panopticon-esque layout allowed for centralized surveillance of prisoners. Skylights in each cell represented the “Eye of God,” suggesting to prisoners that they were always being watched. Cells were attached to small outdoor exercise yards, enclosed by high walls to discourage communication between prisoners. Guards placed hoods over prisoners’ heads whenever they left their cells to prevent them from seeing each other.
But overcrowding made isolation difficult to enforce, so Eastern State abandoned solitary confinement in 1913. That same year, Jewish prisoners gathered to pray for the first time together in the prison’s emergency hospital.
The idea for a more official synagogue came from the top: Alfred Fleisher, the Jewish president of the prison’s board of trustees, advocated for the construction of a sanctuary, partly over concerns that Jewish prisoners would be pressured to convert to Christianity, according to Tinker.
In 1922, prisoners and outside volunteers built the ornate sanctuary. Lights in the shape of menorahs surrounded the ark, and a gold Star of David was affixed to the ceiling next to a skylight.
“It was a chance for the Jewish congregants to have a space that really resonated with their religion, and was a little fancier than the rest of the prison,” Tinker said. “It has sort of the gravitas that you might really find in a synagogue.”
Most of the congregants were serving time for petty crimes, Tinker said, and their stays at Eastern State lasted no more than a few years. For instance, Sydney Bleecher, a prisoner and congregant at Eastern State, was serving time after pleading guilty to stealing 542 suits and overcoats from a store. But for many congregants, the synagogue’s impact lasted beyond the lengths of their prison sentences.
“It is not easy to find words that can say what we feel about you,” Bleecher wrote in a 1948 letter to Joseph Paull, one of the synagogue’s most devoted volunteers. “You have done so much for us that we are far and away indebted to you. Maybe we can repay in part by becoming decent citizens and, like you and your wife, reach out a hand to those who need help.”
The synagogue was also unusually integrated with the outside community. Fleisher attended every service at the synagogue until his death in 1928. Sabato Morais, the spiritual leader at Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, simultaneously served as a chaplain at Eastern State.
All that support occurred despite the prison’s small Jewish population, which never rose above 80 in a prison that held roughly 1,800 people in the 1930s.
Yet according to Tinker, the synagogue never faced much pushback from people of other faiths.
“When they started it, it’s also World War I, World War II, and all that antisemitism that’s happening,” Tinker said. “It could have easily gone another direction.”
Jewish life behind bars
Most prisons today hold Jewish services in multi-faith chapels rather than separate Jewish sanctuaries — a practical arrangement that allows facilities to accommodate prisoners of many faiths in a shared space.
After Eastern State closed in 1971, its successor, Graterford Prison, also featured a dedicated synagogue. But after Graterford closed in 2018, its replacement, SCI Phoenix, opened with a multifaith chapel instead.
Today, Kolakowski, chaplaincy program director at the State Correctional Institute at Waymart, Pa., conducts services in a multifaith chapel or, when it’s occupied, a classroom shared with Jehovah’s Witnesses.
There, he leads regular services and holiday celebrations, including Passover seders and Hanukkah candle-lightings. During Sukkot, he hosts services in a makeshift sukkah.
“It’s meaningful to every inmate that practices a religious tradition,” Kolakowski said. “I remember one inmate in particular — he expressed how much he appreciated having the opportunity to have the lulav.”
But accommodating religious practice inside a prison often requires balancing spiritual needs with security concerns. When Kolakowski advocated for a Sikh prisoner to be able to wear a turban, for example, prison officials had to consider that the traditional head covering could be used to hide contraband, he said. Kolakowski ultimately got the item approved by suggesting a small turban with less fabric.
Modern-day prisons are legally required to accommodate prisoners’ religious practices unless they can demonstrate a compelling reason not to, such as a risk to staff or other prisoners’ safety. How those accommodations are carried out, however, can vary from prison to prison.
In 2023, for example, Jewish inmate Riley Benjamin sued the D.C. Department of Corrections after officials required him to produce outside proof of his Judaism before providing him with kosher meals. The jail later agreed to change its policy.
“Today, it’s really prison by prison, warden by warden, how they are defining religious freedom,” Tinker said. “One thing those laws really do is they sort of let the prison decide and the staff decide what it means to a certain extent.”
Still, there have been some successors to the Eastern State synagogue — including at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, where Rabbi Irving Koslowe convinced the prison administration to let him convert a basement storage room into an exclusively Jewish place of worship in 1959.
Koslowe died in 2000. But his great grandson, Benjamin Koslowe, visited the prison years later and wrote about the experience for Yeshiva University’s student newspaper.
In an interview with the Forward, Koslowe recalled one of his great-grandfather’s favorite jokes: “They’re the only synagogue that hopes that they don’t have a quorum.”
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