Judge’s Comment About Aleph

By COLlive reporter

Over 200 people gathered at a symposium hosted by the Aleph Institute – North East Region in Pittsburgh, titled ‘Repairing Our Community – One Person At A Time’ on November 9, 2014.

The Symposium comes in the middle of a two-day conference geared to training the Rabbis, and volunteers who visit Federal, state and local prisons, and state hospitals and group homes. This conference provides the participants with the tools to be more effective in their work.

One of the highlights of U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti’s keynote speech was that she gathered all faith-based agencies in Western Pennsylvania for a meeting at the court earlier this year for the purpose of learning from, and follow the direction of Aleph Institute in providing re-entry programs for ex-offenders.

With an expected doubling of offenders re-entering society in 2015, and new laws and sentencing rules being implemented, it is essential that the courts turn to faith based and community based agencies to provide the necessary tools and programs to ensure a productive transition, Judge Conti said.

Although the court cannot instruct an inmate to go to a religious or faith based program, if the offender proposes a plan which includes going to Aleph Institute and fulfilling its program requirements, this court will look more favorably upon the plan and is more likely to make it part of the sentence, the Judge added.

Studies have demonstrated that without the help of the community those re-entering society face a greater risk of being arrested again and spending many more years in prison. Judge Conti thanked Aleph Institute for leading the community with providing essential programs that will save them and their families from certain despair.

Among the announcements and speeches made at the Symposium, a special candle lighting ceremony was held in memory of Mr. Fred Landay OBM, a longtime supporter and volunteer of Aleph Institute.

Landay was responsible for starting Aleph Institute’s initiative of bringing joy and love to the children of incarcerated members of our community, and reminding the children that their parent, while not at home today, still thinks about them and loves them.

It is in his loving memory that Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel, Executive Director of Aleph Institute, announced the launching of “Fred’s Wall,” a fund designated primarily for the support of the children’s programs at Aleph Institute, to help children of inmates whose close family member is incarcerated, with the hope it will strengthen family ties.

There was a clear message among the speakers at the Symposium that night: that the work being done at Aleph Institute was revolutionary and that the staff, under the leadership of Rabbi Vogel, are constantly raising the bar for inmate support, community development, and reentry programming.

Pittsburgh Councilman Corey O’Connor Reverend Ulli Klemm, Administrator for Religion and Volunteer Services at the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Ms. Belinda Ashley, Chief U.S. Probation Officer for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Mr. Larry Ludwig, District Director of the Pennsylvania Probation and Parole Board, and Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, Dean of Yeshiva Schools, all came to the microphone to thank Aleph Institute for being a leader in the community, a model for other faith-based organizations.

Finally, to end the evening on a wonderful high note, Mrs. Patty Love-Anouchi was named the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ for her tireless two years of dedication in mentoring a young lady, who just two years earlier had been labeled as a “lost cause” due to her arrest record and criminal lifestyle. Today, Mrs. Anouchi’s mentee is an honor student and on the dean’s list a local community college with her sights set on attending the University of Pittsburgh within the coming year.