Each spring, Rabbi Mendy Katz of Bal Harbor, Fla., spends a few weeks in a northern New Jersey shipping warehouse. As the director of outreach programs for the Aleph Institute, Rabbi Katz oversees the logistics for delivering hundreds of shipments of Passover essentials— matzah, maror, seder plates and haggadahs—each headed to a correctional facility somewhere around the United States. The price tag runs into the hundreds of thousands, and the vast majority of the recipients will never meet him, but he says it all worth it.

“For prisoners, it means the world to them to know that someone cares,” said Rabbi Katz. “They know that they haven’t been forgotten about, and we’re there to help them, materially and spiritually.”

Every year before Passover, the Aleph Institute ensures that Jews behind bars are able to celebrate the holiday. This year, they will send out over 400 Seder Plates, 2,000 Hagaddahs and more than 8,000 lbs of matzah, as well as 2,750 packages of macaroons, gefilte fish, and other holiday foods.

An inmate from New York recently sent Katz a letter: “We appreciate everything that Aleph and all the staff and volunteers do to help us and our families. It is not easy… Knowing that there are people out that care about us is very uplifting.”

The Aleph Institute also sends Passover supplies to Jews incarcerated internationally, allowing people in over 40 remote prisons around the world — including such places as India, Belarus, the UAE, Malaysia, Taiwan and Spain — to have a Passover seder. Over 1,400 families of incarcerated individuals will receive shmurah matzah as well.

Aleph’s Approach

At the inspiration of the Rebbe, Florida Chabad emissary Rabbi Sholom Lipskar founded the Aleph Institute in 1981, and in the years since, it has become the leading Jewish organization caring for the incarcerated and their families.

“The Rebbe was very much ahead of the curve,” said Lipskar in a 2018 Chabad.org profile. “He saw what was happening, and he pressed that prisoners be treated with dignity, and that they be given educational opportunities so that they could use their time in the facilities for the better.”

Lipskar passed away last spring. Today, his nephew, Rabbi Aaron Lipskar, serves as the CEO of the Aleph Institute. He has expanded the scope of services that Aleph provides.

“Today, we work with every component of the legal system,” said the younger Rabbi Lipskar. “In courtrooms, we work with alternative sentencing, as well as reduced sentencing. But our efforts in the realm of preventive educational programs are definitely a major focus, as the Rebbe encouraged education as a preventive measure instead of punishment.”

The Aleph Institute approaches criminal justice reform and recidivism reduction through preventive education and faith-based rehabilitation programs, re-entry assistance, alternative sentencing guidance and counsel, and policy research and recommendations. In short, they believe in helping all people.

“We care for everyone, regardless of their religious affiliation or ethnicity,” said Lipskar, emphasizing that although the Aleph Institute is a Jewish organization, they offer services irrespective of religion. “We put a huge emphasis on family unification and support. In fact, we recently began a program that focuses specifically on incarcerated women (AIW), some of whom have given birth in prison.”

‘To Return Them To The Good Path’

The Rebbe noted that prison is not a Jewish form of punishment, and so its existence meant that there was a deeper goal, namely education.

“The goal of incarceration … is to return them to the good path, and to bring the incarcerated to a place where when they are released they will be able to open a ‘new page’ and to lead their lives in the way of justice and righteousness,” said the Rebbe at the 1985 farbrengen gathering that was attended by Rabbi Lipskar and a group of Jewish inmates as part of a Federal religious furlough program. “Not only that, but they will be able to positively impact others by explaining ‘this happened to me,’ and this has been the result.”

Aleph works 365 days a year to ensure Jewish inmates are taken care of, and feel like they can reintegrate into society after serving their time. The Jewish holidays are an especially important time where inmates feel the organization’s ever growing impact.

The Rebbe wrote to Jewish inmates as early as 1977. “When a person finds himself in a situation of ‘after sunset’ i.e. when the light of day has given light to gloom and darkness,” he wrote, “one must not despair. The darkness is only temporary, and it will soon be superseded by a bright light.”

On Passover, that letter takes on a particular resonance. The holiday does not ask whether the people celebrating it deserve to be free. It simply insists that they remember what freedom felt like—and that they pass the story on.