Over the last few months, I’ve been paying visits to SCI-Phoenix, the maximum security prison not far from KI. I go with a small group of volunteers to spend time with Jewish inmates. I generally lead discussions or Shabbat morning services during these visits. Most of the men in the group have already been in for years. Most of them still have many more years to go. They’ve all made heinous mistakes, leading to their incarceration.

I’ve gotten to know them fairly well over these visits: Frank, Sam, Dave, Anthony… I have learned that they are much more than their moments of wrongdoing. They are more than their most egregious decisions. They have families. They are layered and complex. They have passions. They have hobbies. They care deeply about their faith. Many of them are true students of Judaism, reading the Torah and our texts regularly. They seem to come from a place of patience and kindness in our conversations, always curious and engaged. 

There is so much I have learned from them: about repentance, about attitude, about second chances. It’s been a pleasure to have my assumptions challenged once and again. While we tend to stress about all the errands we have to run and how to pay the bills and the weather outside and the news, they have always exuded a kind of peacefulness to me. Their world has shrunk down to the very finite space of a jail cell. We talk about heritage, about current events, about identity. We talk about a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform. 

I wonder what they would teach us as we enter this holy day season. Perhaps they would remind us that we can move forward from our lowest points (and we can). Perhaps they would remind us that we need not be defined by our worst choices (which is true). Perhaps they would remind us that we are all a work in progress, trying to grow and improve ourselves every day. Maybe they would remind us to be thankful for the freedoms we have as Americans and as Jews in this country. Even if this country is far from perfect and our lives can be trying, there is indeed much to be thankful for each day. Maybe they would remind us that there are many who only wish to have the types of days we get to lead.

In some ways, we are all prisoners. Some of us are prisoners of anxiety or fear. Some of us remain imprisoned in the past, unable to move forward. Some of us remain locked in grief, unsure of a way out. Some of us are imprisoned by doubt or by anger or by sadness. Maybe by loneliness. Some of us feel like we’ve been groping for a key for years, trying to move to a place of happiness and contentment at last.

I pray that these holy days, now fast approaching, grant us all a sense of liberation. May we be unbound by fear, unbound by our sadness, lifted up in community and in sharing this very special season together. As an extended family, we will speak the words, hear the melodies, join in the rituals that our people have turned to and returned to for generations. May we remember all that is good in ourselves and in our world. May we see clearly the blessings all about us. May we go from strength to strength, together.