What’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a place like this?

That’s the first question the prison counselor asked me. At the time, I couldn’t answer him because I didn’t know. I knew I’d always been a “nice Jewish girl,” but I didn’t realize that I was different. I thought everyone came from the same kind of background I did. I had never gone without a meal, even in the toughest of times, grew up in the same house and neighborhood, had the same friends from kindergarten through college, married a Jew who fathered my children. I was involved with B’nai Brith women, Hadassah, and was a synagogue Board member. I didn’t use drugs or drink, but did plant trees in Israel. The only four letter words I used were “cook, iron, bake and wash.” I had no street smarts and no track marks. Suddenly I was a “guest” at the California Institution for Women and stood out like a sore thumb.

I made a mistake because I was an addict and didn’t know it. I was a compulsive spender – using a different kind of substance to fill the “hole in my soul” – to kill the pain of not feeling loved, of having no self-esteem. After fourteen years in a marriage that was not working, and compulsively eating to distort my body to 240 pounds, I spent compulsively as well. I began to beg, borrow and bounce checks; our home was almost lost to foreclosure, cars were repossessed, and relationships destroyed. I was hungry for love and all the money or food in the world wouldn’t have satisfied me. My addiction took total control of me when I got involved with the man I worked for. He told me he loved me, but ignored one major problem – he had a wife. My life continued to spiral out of control and two years later, I began taking his money.

Although I’d been a paralegal for over twenty years, I never really knew what the judicial process was all about–the power, the price and color of justice. Humiliation overwhelmed me at times. I heard about the charges against me on the radio while driving my car. My children were taunted at school that their mother was a crook. I still did not understand what I had done, even after numerous therapists, and often shut myself in a darkened room, hoping the fear and pain would go away. I was caught in a web of judicial process for nine years on a white collar crime that should have been resolved in two years. No one knew what to do with me.

While in prison, my best friends were fear and loneliness. I got an education quickly. I learned the language, the games and the hustles. I watched women become lovers to other women in order to survive. I learned how to make a syringe out of a ball point pen cartridge, and how to steal food from the prison dining room (I say “dining” loosely as it did not resemble dining in any way). I coped with not speaking to my children for almost a year because phone calls were limited to once a week and it was hard to reach them. I blocked out the humiliation of strip searches, all body cavities being intruded upon. Although I’d never used drugs, I was treated like every other junkie. One learns quickly in prison to trust no one. You can never be sure if you are being dealt with honestly or being set up by someone – inmates or cops. I learned things about myself I’d never known before, about people I’d always been sheltered from.

I found myself making friends with members of the Manson family and it was like a dream. They’d committed one of the most horrible crimes in our lifetime, yet were just like me in many ways. I’d feared ever coming in contact with people like that, feared women who had used drugs, booze and men to survive. Many women thought I was a cop planted on the inside to snitch on them and I had to prove them wrong to survive, even though I still believed in the system. I’d never had a traffic ticket or an overdue library book. I walked a very thin line and watched my back at all times.

One day, while playing tag football with a group of women, one of the toughest women I’d ever met started to cry about her children and I found myself comforting her. We had discovered our common ground: what her toughness couldn’t hide. She was a mother, too. This tough, street wise lady showed me a humanness I’d never seen. From then on I was never afraid, of anything or anyone, especially not of myself.

I took pride in the way I dressed, kept myself clean even in a mosquito infested housing unit and 100 degree temperatures, wearing state issued clothes. I was educated and a communicator and began using those skills. My roots in Judaism and its traditions made me more human and gave me enormous strength. I marked each day as a new beginning, befriending the other Jewish women, sharing my love of Jewish customs and traditions, teaching them how to celebrate the holidays and the Sabbath.

I spent a Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Chanukah in prison, and over 70 Sabbaths. There were ten Jewish women when I went in, fifteen when I left. We met in a small room one evening each week when the rabbi came from LA. Many women had never seen a dreidle or heard the prayers over the Sabbath candles. It didn’t matter that it was Thursday night and not Friday. We sliced the challah and enjoyed the pastries from the outside world. Of course, the rabbi had to fight with security to keep the pastries from being turned into crumbs as each piece was carefully checked for drugs. We sang songs in Hebrew and shared Yiddish jokes, talked about movies like Yentl and books like The Chosen. Most of all, we formed a Sisterhood. And I became President. In prison. In a state issued dress. With bars on the windows.

Jewish Family Service from Los Angeles does everything possible to take care of the hundreds of Jews in the Los Angeles County jails and men’s and women’s prisons. They make sure there were enough holiday foods and presents. Everyone gets a Mezuzah or Star of David.

Nonetheless, I believe that Jewish prisoners are the “forgotten Jews.” They are so often forgotten – by friends, by family, by community. It’s not intentional, but most Jews do not realize or believe that there are thousands of Jews in prison in this country. There are more Jews in prison today because drug addiction knows no religious, cultural or ethnic boundaries. Some of Wall Street’s most shining stars are Jewish, and many served time in federal prisons for well publicized white collar crimes.

As has occurred throughout history, Jews hunger for education, which is limited in prison, and for literature, which is even more limited as books are usually quite old. The intellectual dialogue we take so for granted in the free world is non-existent in prison, except for the street language. But, most of all, what everyone hungers for – Jews and non Jews, prisoners or not– is a touch of love. A simple touch of love.