The Prison Minyan E-Book

Jonathan Stone

• Herausgeber: Lightning Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Welcome to Otisville, America's only Jewish prison…where a new celebrity inmate is about to shatter the peace'Erudite, trenchant and touching' - Michael Arditti'Delectable... glorious... this most cherishably Jewish of books.' - Jewish ChronicleThe scene is Otisville Prison, upstate New York. A crew of fraudsters, tax evaders, trigamists and forgers discuss matters of right and wrong in a Talmudic study and prayer group, or 'minyan', led by a rabbi who's a fellow convict.As the only prison in the federal system with a kosher deli, Otisville is the penitentiary of choice for white-collar Jewish offenders, many of whom secretly like the place. They've learned to game the system, so when the regime is toughened to punish a newly arrived celebrity convict who has upset the 45th president, they find devious ways to fight back.Shadowy forces up the ante by trying to 'Epstein' – ie assassinate – the newcomer, and visiting poetry professor Deborah Liston ends up in dire peril when she sees too much. She has helped the minyan look into their souls. Will they now step up to save her?Jonathan Stone brings the sensibility of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth to the post-truth era in a sharply comic novel that is also wise, profound and deeply moral.

Leseprobe

The scene is Otisville Prison, upstate New York. A crew of fraudsters, tax evaders, trigamists and forgers discuss matters of right and wrong in a Talmudic study and prayer group, or ‘minyan’, led by a rabbi who’s a fellow convict.

As the only prison in the federal system with a kosher deli, Otisville is the penitentiary of choice for white-collar Jewish offenders, many of whom secretly like the place. They’ve learned to game the system, so when the regime is toughened to punish a newly arrived celebrity convict who has upset the 45th president, they find devious ways to fight back.

Shadowy forces up the ante by trying to ‘Epstein’ – ie assassinate – the newcomer, and visiting poetry professor Deborah Liston ends up in dire peril when she sees too much. She has helped the minyan look into their souls. Will they now step up to save her?

Jonathan Stone brings the sensibility of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth to the post-truth era in a sharply comic novel that is also wise, profound and deeply moral.

‘Abundant humour and a light touch but also raises some serious issues: the true cost of a life of crime; the meaning of loyalty; antisemitism; morality; and the power of poetry’

NORA GOLD

‘Warm, insightful, wise and very funny’

ABI SILVER

Jonathan Stone has published nine novels, several of which are currently optioned for film: Moving Day is set up as a feature at Lionsgate Entertainment, Days of Night has been optioned by New Republic Pictures, and Parting Shot has been optioned by Marc Platt Productions. Until his recent retirement, Jon was also the creative director at a New York advertising agency and did most of his fiction writing on the commuter train between the Connecticut suburbs and Manhattan. A graduate of Yale, he is married, with a son and daughter.

Other titles by Jonathan Stone

The Cold Truth

The Heat of Lies

Breakthrough

Parting Shot

Moving Day

The Teller

Two For The Show

Days of Night

Die Next

Published in 2021

by Lightning Books

Imprint of Eye Books Ltd

29A Barrow Street

Much Wenlock

Shropshire

TF13 6EN

www.eye-books.com

Copyright © Jonathan Stone 2021

Cover design by Ifan Bates

Typeset in Goudy Oldstyle and Newtext Light ITC

No part of this publication may be replaced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Jonathan Stone has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

The opening chapter of The Prison Minyan, ‘Welcome to Otisville’, was first published in JewishFiction.net, in its Spring 2021 issue.

New York Times article used with permission.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

ISBN 9781785632754

Contents

PART 1

WELCOME TO OTISVILLE

THE SEVEN QUESTIONS

JUJUBEES REDUX

CON, JOB

THE RULE OF THREE

THE TWO-TV SOLUTION

AUSCHWITZ

CAMP WIKIWANDI

JACOB, ESAU AND PHIL

THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: A REVIEW

DISCO BALL

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT: FURTHER READING

POETRY 101

PART 2

NO RUGELACH

WHO AM I REALLY? BY SIMON NADLER

NO BLINTZES

FAMILY MAN, BY MARTY ADLER

SECOND THOUGHTS, BY SIMON NADLER

WATCHING MY FERRARI BURN, BY SAUL SOLOMON

A POEM FROM THE PISK

VENGEANCE

AGAIN WITH THE BLINTZES

THE ART OF DISCOVERY, BY ABE ROSEN

A SPIRITUAL CRISIS

SHALOM SULEIMAN

STRANGE CHANGE

SUCH A DEAL

SAUL SEARCHING

WHAT A PILL

SHALOM, JACK ARMSTRONG

SINGH’S LAST SONG

QUESTIONS FOR THE RABBI

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

MORE QUESTIONS

A CLOSE READING

SURE AS SHIT

FOXES AND MUSENBACKS

FUCKIN’ KLEINMAN

YOU MUST BE HIGH

AGAIN WITH THE POETRY

THE STORY OF SAMSON

POETIC JUSTICE

SHALOM, WARDEN. SHALOM, PROFESSOR

WHAT’S ONE MORE JEW?

LEVY’S NAP

MEANWHILE

DOGGED PURSUIT

THE HAND OF GOD

MEANWHILE

A BARK IS WORSE

ARMSTRONG AND LISTON: SHALOM AGAIN

BLOODBATH, BY PHIL STEINERMAN

WHITE TRASH

EAT THE POEM

GONE FOR GOOD

A CUP OF JUSTICE, BY SAUL SOLOMON

SHALOM, BIG WILLIE

THANKS…

PART 1

New York Times, January 22, 2019

Michael Cohen’s Prison of Choice: Well-known to Jewish Offenders

by Corey Kilgannon

When Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, was sentenced last month to three years in federal prison on fraud charges, he had the right to request any number of prison camps favored by white-collar offenders for their relatively resort-like settings. But Mr Cohen chose a shabby, low-slung building 75 miles northwest of New York City, with an antiquated weight room, an uneven tennis court, and no swimming pool.

‘For a Jewish person, there is no place like Otisville,’ said Earl Seth David, 54, a former inmate who attended kosher meals, religious classes, and weekly Shabbat services…

Otisville’s camp has long been the lockup of choice among Jewish white-collar offenders…

…Most inmates are Jewish – many of them orthodox and Hasidic – and many are doctors, lawyers, accountants, and businessmen who committed fraud. A few also have backgrounds as ordained rabbis and, once inside, some assume a spiritual leadership role…

There is never a problem reaching a minyan, or a quorum of at least 10 Jews needed to hold services, at the camp. Messages left for prison officials at Otisville were not returned, and Bureau of Prisons officials would not provide any specific information on Jewish services at the camp.

WELCOME TO OTISVILLE

Yisgadahl, v’yisgadash, sh’mei raba…

That’s his cue.

B’alma di-v’ra chirutei…

The Mourner’s Kaddish. His signal to alert the other guards that the morning service is coming to an end. The prisoners will be shifting into the yard. A few hanging back to chat with the rabbi.

Ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’im’ru, amen.

This morning, fifteen of them, chanting it together. (A minyan – at least ten males – is required for worship, according to Jewish religious law. But no more than twenty at a time, according to State of New York policy and Federal Bureau of Prisons guidelines.)

Yisbarach v’yishtabach, v’yispa’ar v’yisromam…

At this point he can just about chant their prayer along with them. He’s had the morning shift six years now.

‘Big Willie, you’re like an honorary Jew!’ Simon Nadler calls out to him with a big toothy smile. (Bank fraud, five years. Completely fictitious loan applications, fourteen million in loan approvals. The investigation turned up phoney applications all the way back to his Wharton School admission.) ‘Join us anytime. You probably know the service as well as the rabbi at this point, eh Rebbe?!’

The rabbi smiles gently. (Rabbi Morton Meyerson. Five years. Embezzled 3.5 million from his New Jersey congregation. He’s the minyan’s spiritual leader. Their guide in worship and discussion.)

The fifteen of them are huddled together in their circle of metal chairs. Big Willie stands by the door all alone.

Their wild grey beards. Their round bellies. (Otisville Correctional, Otisville New York, is the only prison in the federal system with a kosher deli, and these guys take full advantage – pastrami, corned beef, tongue, gefilte fish, blintzes, rugelach.) In their loose-fitting light-green prison uniforms, they look more like a meeting of doctors and hospital staff than of inmates. Big Willie would never say it out loud – he knows how it would make him sound, and he knows it probably says more about him than about them, but he can’t help thinking it: Prison is making them all look more Jewish. Sound more Jewish. More like one another. Their intonations going up at the end of their sentences, everything a mild question, like nothing is definite. Maybe yes, maybe no. Like they still don’t believe in the definiteness of their verdicts. Most of them have this constant look of amusement. Or contentment. Cheshire-cat grins like they got away with something. Like they’re sharing in some mild, continual little joke. Like they’re a bunch of mischievous kids at some fancy Jewish day school or sleepaway camp.

Other prisoners, when they get here, commit themselves to weightlifting, exercise, working out, getting in the best shape of their lives. Not these guys.

V’yisnaseh, v’yis’hadar v’yis’aleh v’yis’halal sh’mei…

Big Willie watches them all praying, muttering, swaying forward and backward and side-to-side in their metal folding chairs. Trying to impress who? The rabbi? Each other? God?

And when they’re not praying, they’re laughing. Telling dirty jokes. Tilting back in their metal chairs and philosophizing. He has to sit here and listen to it. He tries to tune it out. He tries to be invisible.

He’s been a guard here at Otisville twenty years. Married, two kids. Steady paycheck; raises are built in unless you have a violation. Even in a government shutdown, prisons need guards. They get by on his pay – barely. They shuffle their credit cards. The bank called their home loan last year on a couple of late payments, but he worked it out with them. Both his kids are at SUNY. He keeps to himself. And keeps an eye on this morning’s minyan, in their circle of folding chairs, going left to right:

Matt Sorcher (Four years. Founded a chain of tax return centers in strip malls on Long Island; discovered a way to funnel a portion of his clients’ electronic refunds to his own bank account.)

Abe Rosen (Eighteen months. Art dealer; forgery of old master paintings. Had archival photos of European nobles and Nazi officers holding the art. But the paintings were counterfeit, the photos were staged, the nobles and the Nazis were hired actors.)

Saul Solomon (Eight years. Solomon Automotive Auctions; hired bidders to inflate sale prices on his Ferrari and Lamborghini collection, declared the inflated value and then ‘suffered’ (staged) a warehouse fire to collect the insurance value. Some of the same Ferraris and Lambos showed up in the auction market years later with new serial numbers.)

Manny Levinson (Bribery, graft. Six years. Congressman from Queens. Jar of candies in his office. Literally a favor bank. When he invited you to take a candy, it signaled he’d do the favor you asked, and when you brought a candy back to his jar, it signaled you were ready to pay him. Someone finally told the authorities that taking candy wasn’t just taking candy.)

The cojones. The balls.

Twenty-six million. Ten million. Eighty million. Fraud numbers so large Big Willie can’t really get his head around them. Standing here watching the minyan one morning, with his cellphone’s calculator, he figured that at his salary – $950 a week, $49,400 a year, call it fifty grand – it would take him sixty years to earn even the lowest amount that anyone here was convicted of stealing. And the higher amounts – say ten million – would take him around two hundred working lifetimes.

Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu…

Another time, watching them, he added up the total theft and fraud in the room. Two-hundred-eighty million. Give or take. Definitely take. All take.

Rabbi Moshe Samuelson (Tax evasion. Four years. Owned a chain of funeral homes. Had only one in ten bodies buried according to custom. Shipped the rest to a low-cost industrial oven facility for cremation, allowing him to re-use coffins, shuffle burial plots, save on corpse storage, and skim millions. Violated Jewish and federal and state law all at once. His sixteen children – sixteen! – come to visit him every Wednesday. The younger ones gather around his shoes and knees, as he tells them a Bible story, which they discuss afterward.)

Two rabbis here. Meyerson, who runs the service, is Reform. Has a degree in psychology. Samuelson is ultra-Orthodox. Looks down on Meyerson as not really a Jew at all. Two rabbis. Which originally stunned Big Willie almost as much as the $280-million fraud figure, but now doesn’t surprise him at all.

Dr Phil Steinerman (Seven years. Chain of blood testing labs across Miami Dade County that weren’t testing much blood. Another doctor eventually noticed how dozens of his patients were receiving precisely the same blood test results.)

Marty Adler (Nine years. President and COO of three successful family businesses. A parking garage empire. A Honda dealership. A Pepsi bottling plant. Marty managed to marry into all three of the families – no law against that, except if you do it at the same time. Three loving spouses, in three different cities. Finally discovered at a bar-mitzvah whose guest list included two of the wives.)

Gregg Lerner (Ten years. Stockbroker to the stars. Took thirty mil all told from his clients. Moved money out of their accounts, without their knowledge, into exotic investments pretty sure to lose money – air rights in western American cities, treasure diving expeditions – then harvested the tax losses and took the write-offs for himself, something Big Willie doesn’t even pretend to understand. Invested several clients in a new Caribbean island resort development that GPS revealed to be nothing but ocean. That part Big Willie can follow.)

V’al kol-yisrael, v’imru, amen.

Mourner’s Kaddish. And sure, they’re all mourning. But commemorating departed family members like you’re supposed to? Come on. They’re mourning their sentences. Mourning the one dumb little mistake they made to get caught.

To Big Willie, the dirty little secret is they’re pretty happy here. Sure, they’re caught, they’re broke, their assets are pretty much gone. They’re outcasts in their own communities. But here at Otisville, they’re comfortable. They’re with their peeps. For a lot of them, at this point in their broken lives, there’s no place they’d rather be. Only a handful of people in the world really understand what they’ve been through; only a handful of people have been through it too – and at Otisville, they’re literally surrounded by those people. People who get them, who can truly understand – every day, all day.

He’s no shrink, but here’s how he sees it: Each of them did what they did because in some way they didn’t feel good enough. Not rich enough, not successful enough, not secure enough, not in control enough. And when they did what they did, they had to keep it a secret, right? The more people you tell, the more you risk being caught, so generally they were keeping it a secret, and it was lonely, anxious, nerve-racking. But once they’re caught, once they’re here, the truth is out, and the loneliness is gone; they’re with their own, and they no longer feel like outcasts.

By the time their sentences end – five years, eight years, nine years (all Otisville sentences are ten years or less) – the world will have pretty much forgotten, they’ll be long out of the news. Maybe even forgotten enough to scam the world again.

Meanwhile, plenty of bagels and brisket, plenty of good company, plenty of storytelling. They look all sorrowful and remorseful when visitors come. But behind closed prison doors, they’re having a pretty good time.

The Mourner’s Kaddish? Big Willie smirks – some of them are already mourning the day their sentence ends.

The Mourner’s Kaddish? They’re pretty damn happy as they chant it.

‘Come on, have a seat, Big Willie,’ says Simon Nadler again. ‘Take a load off – you know we’re not gonna bolt for the door.’ They ask him to join them – and they know he won’t. They know he can’t. So they get to have it both ways. They get to look good for being friendly, inviting him, trying to include him – but they know he’ll never be in the club. Even if he was to go over and sit with them and be part of the service, he’s not in the club. They know it, and he knows it. He’s kind of a loner anyway, and this guard duty, watching them, just reinforces it. With all their friendliness toward him, they get to look good to themselves, look good to each other.

It’s like when they tease him about being a gentile – ‘Big Willie, you’re a Size XL goy!’ – and about his measly pay check, and about his believing in heaven and hell, but they also ask him about his kids, and give him financial advice – so they get to be assholes, but they get to be good guys – they get to have it both ways.

Same thing with his nickname, in a way. You’d think it comes from him being six-foot-five, 260 pounds, so they can’t help but imagine his big wiener, right? So maybe his nickname is their way of trying to get comfortable with that. Flattering him, buttering him up, to bring him down to size? But here’s the thing. He’s five-ten. A hundred and sixty pounds. Smaller and lighter than most of the other guards, but normal-sized. So OK, Big Willie is ironic. Then is the nickname supposed to be only about his wiener? Which they’ve never seen, and which is as normal-sized as he is? This is the kind of shit they’ve got him thinking about, as he stands there, watching them, listening to that prayer and keeping an eye on their morning service.

Lately, they’ve been tossing around ideas for a new nickname. Not for him. For a new inmate who’s arriving shortly. The minyan is trying out nicknames aloud, to hear how they sound. Trying to one-up each other, to see which nickname will stick.

‘The Cashmere Canary.’

‘The Songbird Nerd.’

‘The Songbird Turd.’

‘The Mouth from the South.’ (Meaning New York City, Big Willie knows, seventy-five miles downstate from here.)

‘The Tasselled Tenor.’

‘The Rat Man of Seventh Avenue.’

‘Mighty Mouth.’

A pretty clear theme to them all. Someone who squealed. Who snitched. In normal prison culture, a snitch is the lowest of the low. A known snitch would be doomed already – about to be kicked, shivved, ready to meet his maker, if he were coming to any other prison. But Otisville isn’t normal prison culture, and the guy who’s coming is a celebrity snitch, and if you’re a celebrity, it cancels out everything else. Like in the world beyond prison – if you’re a celeb, nothing else much matters.

‘The Unruly Stooly.’

‘The Fink Who Got Ink.’

‘Yellowbelly.’

‘The Opera Star.’

‘The Pisk.’

‘What’s a pisk?’ he asks Nadler.

‘Yiddish for mouth. A loudmouth. A blabbermouth.’ Nadler smiles at Big Willie. Perfect, isn’t it? Yiddish for Mouth. Couldn’t be simpler. A nickname understood by only the minyan, a custom nickname that’s theirs alone. Big Willie senses already that it’s going to be the winner.

The Pisk.

The Pisk, who didn’t make a quick perp walk with his face hidden under a raincoat like the rest of the minyan, but instead strutted around on national TV for weeks, climbing into and out of cabs in his loud sports coat, going in and out of that gleaming Fifth Avenue headquarters.

The Pisk,whose confession wasn’t in front of an annoyed judge in an empty courtroom like the rest of them, but instead, in front of millions of viewers. To half the country, a devil in a dark suit. To the other half, a possible savior. Hah! How’d that turn out?

The Pisk asked for Otisville, the Jewish prison. Known for its Sabbath services and kosher menu by just a small circle of prosecutors and defense attorneys. But suddenly, Otisville is in the spotlight too.

And will he be beaten? Shivved? Get real. They’ve already got a folding chair saved for him at morning prayers.

The Pisk.

Stepping right out of the national news, off the national stage, into a cell at Otisville.

Because he’s one of them.

Big Willie had watched the minyan, all listening silently to his testimony.

Heads tilted up, as if to heaven, at the TVs mounted high on the dayroom wall.

Not caring what he said so much, it seemed – whatever the mix of truth, lies, shades of gray – as who was saying it, and how he said it.

Like a guy they knew.

A guy from down the street.

A guy at the next table in some overpriced New York steakhouse.

Squirming, blustering, bragging.

In the context of Otisville, a totally unremarkable guy.

Arriving from a totally remarkable situation.

Welcome to Otisville.

the seven questions

(Rabbi Morton Meyerson: fraud, five years; embezzled $3.5 million from Agudeth Sholom, Parsippany, New Jersey)

‘Today, I want to discuss the Seven Questions,’ says Rabbi Meyerson, once the morning service ends and much of the minyan has wandered into the prison yard to take in the sunny, bright, irresistible June day. A half dozen of them have stayed for further religious discussion.

‘The Seven Questions?’ asks Simon Nadler (of the fake loan applications).

‘I thought it was the Four Questions,’ says Abe Rosen (of the forged old masters) ‘you know, Mah nishtana – why is this night different? – all that mishugas…’

‘Judaism is like Jeopardy,’ observes Marty Adler (the trigamist). ‘Life’s answers are always in the form of a question.’

‘The Four Questions are from the Passover haggadah – the story of the Jews’ flight from Egypt,’ explains Rabbi Meyerson, in a tone of infinite patience that any first-grade teacher would recognize and admire. ‘But the Seven Questions are from the Talmud.’ Meyerson strokes his beard pensively. ‘These are the Seven Questions you’ll be asked at the Heavenly Tribunal, according to the Talmudic scholars.’

‘You mean, to get through the heavenly gates?’ asks Saul Solomon (warehouse fire insurance fraud).

‘Now updated, I’m sure, with razor wire and surveillance cameras,’ muses Abe Rosen, earning a couple of passing smiles.

‘Well, Jewish tradition isn’t explicit on whether there are physical gates,’ says the rabbi.

‘The Heavenly Tribunal…sort of like the Court of Appeals?’ says Matt Sorcher (fraudulent tax return centers).

Laughs all around.

‘State of One’s Soul, Appellate Division,’ Nadler adds on, smiling.

‘Oooh, good one Nadler!’

‘Yes, sort of. Sure,’ allows the rabbi. ‘Our tradition tells us that these are the seven questions each of us must answer sufficiently to enter the kingdom of the eternal.’ He strokes his beard again, looks around at them. ‘I want to ask about the first question first, not because it’s first, but because it’s pretty surprising that it’s first. The first question is: Were you honest in business?’

Disbelief all around the half-circle.

‘Come on – that’s really first?’

‘Ahead of questions about how you treated your wife or your kids?’

‘Yes,’ Meyerson affirms. ‘And why would that be the first question?’

‘No idea.’ Head shakes. Looks of bafflement. Abstract strokes of beards, and tapping their chins, like rabbinical students from the thirteenth century.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ says Rabbi Meyerson. ‘Because the scholars felt that the way you treat those in business, where you are tempted and even expected to put yourself first, would be a good indicator of how you’d treat everyone else in your life.’

‘Uh-oh,’ says Nadler.

General laughter.

‘Meaning a lot of us are in trouble right from the get-go,’ says Adler.

Laughter again.

‘Solly’s not even getting in the door. Not even a foothold on the heavenly cloud,’ Adler continues, nodding indicatively at Saul Solomon.

‘No room at the In,’ adds Sorcher.

Laughter.

‘Where’s my handbasket?’ says Solomon. ‘I’m going straight to hell. Hand me my handbasket, somebody.’

‘Rabbi, what are the other questions?’

‘We might score better on other questions,’ Meyerson acknowledges.

‘Nadler, doesn’t matter what you score, you’ll still fake your way into heaven.’

Laughter. ‘Nadler, you gonna lie on this application too?’

‘I’m gonna have to,’ Simon Nadler shrugs.

More laughter.

‘Question 2. Did you make time for your spiritual life?’

‘Good news there!’ exclaims Phil Steinerman (fraudulent blood-testing clinics). ‘We’re all sitting here with you, Rabbi, so we all qualify on that one!’

‘Yeah baby,’ says Saul Solomon, exuberantly. ‘Check mark on that one. What’s next?’

‘You really think it means only your new spiritual life in prison?’ asks the rabbi.

‘Hey, it’s a yes-no question, as I see it. Did you make time for your spiritual life? I’m here, so a priori, yes,’ says Steinerman.

‘A priori. Listen to Dr Steinerman. If you’d been a little more a priori, you wouldn’t be here, would you?’ says Nadler.

‘Question 3. Did you busy yourself with procreation?’ says the rabbi.

Uproarious laughter. The rabbi explains. ‘Well, it really means did you occupy yourself with parenting. With continuity. With creating the next generation.’

‘What you got to say about that, Abe?’ Abe Rosen, the old masters forger, is gay. And immediately offended. Or pretends to be offended – he doesn’t really give two shits what any of these felons think, and they know it. ‘We adopted,’ says Rosen. ‘Parenting, continuity, next generation, I proudly check the box.’

‘But it says procreation. Never mind what it means. It says procreation,’ Nadler needles him. ‘I go by the letter of the Talmudic law!’ Nadler proclaims with a smile.

‘Oy, listen to this,’ says Rosen.

‘Moving on,’ says Rabbi Meyerson, ‘Question Four: Were you hopeful?’

Silence, a pause, while they ponder the strangeness, confront the opacity of the question.

‘Well yes, I was hopeful,’ says Greg Lerner finally (stock brokerage accounting fraud). ‘Hopeful about getting away with it.’ He shrugs.

Nobody laughs. Nobody argues with his answer.

‘It’s true,’ says Phil Steinerman. ‘Our crimes show our optimism about getting away with them.’ He tilts his head, squints his eyes. ‘But also our pessimism about the nature of the world. That the world is cruel and tough so you have to cheat and steal your way through it.’

‘But we were all hopeful that our crimes would work out, and that if our crimes worked out, then our lives would work out,’ says Marty Adler. ‘Pretty damn hopeful, if you ask me.’

‘When it says were you hopeful?, I think it means did you live in an upbeat, positive, life-affirming way. Did you affirm life?’ says Rabbi Meyerson.

‘You mean, like that old song says, accentuate the positive?’ says Sorcher.

‘Exactly.’

‘Well the fact that we’re here says pretty strongly that we did not, like the song says next, eliminate the negative,’ says Abe Rosen with a wry smile.

‘Of course not, but did we try?’ says Steinerman. ‘That’s the question. Not, did we succeed, but did we try? That’s what they’re judging at the gates of heaven.’

‘See I think you’re going all technical and lawyerly on us, Steinerman,’ says Nadler. ‘Trying to work the questions to get in the heavenly door. Falsifying one more blood test.’

The rabbi checks his watch, presses on. ‘Question Five. Did you learn to discern what’s true and false?’

A moment of quiet. They look at each other. ‘Look, if I’m honest…’ says Sorcher.

‘You’re not,’ Nadler says. Scattered snickers.

Sorcher ignores the snickers. ‘If I’m honest with myself, I always knew what was true and what was false. I could tell right off. I could look at my parents and my sisters and tell right off if they were leveling with me or not.’

‘Sorch, that’s not what they mean by telling the difference,’ says Abe Rosen. ‘Not like, as a weapon, or a point of advantage. They mean could you tell the difference in yourself? What was true, meaning what was important and real, versus what was false and fleeting. Like, did you try to learn, to grow, to understand people?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ says Sorcher. ‘I’m just saying, since I could always see the difference between true and false, maybe I didn’t think it was a big difference. I don’t know.’

A short silence again. While they ponder Matt Sorcher’s answer: Maybe I didn’t think it WAS a big difference. Maybe only judging Matt Sorcher by his response, or maybe relating it to themselves. Either way, they don’t know exactly where to go from here. What else to say.

‘Next question, Rabbi,’ says Nadler, spinning one hand in quick tight circles to say, let’s move on, I’ve got places to be, things to do, which of course, he doesn’t. Nobody does.

‘Question Six. Did you seek wisdom?’

‘Depends on what you mean by wisdom.’ Abe Rosen leans back. ‘Did we seek knowledge? All of us, absolutely, each of us studied our business, our industry, studied the best way to pull off what we pulled off. So if knowledge is wisdom, yes, we all sought wisdom. Enough wisdom to do what we needed to do.’

Phil Steinerman smiles. ‘But it wasn’t all the wisdom we needed, ‘’cause we ended up here, right?’

‘Ah, one more bit of a priori from Steinerman,’ Nadler teases.

Lerner jumps in, eagerly. ‘Which means that we now all do have wisdom, because we’ve all learned what we did wrong.’

‘Yeah,’ smiles Nadler, almost laughing. ‘We’ve all figured out exactly what we did wrong, so by definition, we’re all wiser now.’

‘But did you seek that wisdom you now have?’ asks the rabbi. ‘Did you look for it?’

‘No,’ admits Lerner, ‘the wisdom I have now, it kind of had to seek me out. It had to clobber me over the head. I wasn’t looking for it, so it had to look for me.’

Silence again.

‘A lesson learned,’ says Abe Rosen. ‘A lesson learnedwould qualify as wisdom, right? So if, as they say, you’ve learned your lesson, then you have acquired wisdom.’

‘But you can’t be sure any of us has learned our lesson,’ says Adler. ‘You can’t say we have while we’re still in here. In here, it’s just a lesson heard. You only know if you learned your lesson once you’re out, and you don’t do it again.’

‘What’s the last question, Rabbi? I gotta get outside and do my sit-ups.’

‘I can see the difference it’s making, Nadler. You’re looking buff,’ says Abe Rosen. All eyes in the Talmudic discussion turn now to the roll of fat around Simon Nadler’s belly – which he grabs in both hands, in case anyone missed it.

‘Yeah, what’s the final question? Is this like Final Jeopardy, and the right answer could put us over the top, even if we fucked up the previous ones?’ asks Adler.

‘Enough already with Jeopardy, Adler.’

‘Question 7,’ the Rabbi reads. ‘Were you true to yourself, by doing what you were meant to do, and doing your best with what you were given?’

‘Oh, man, they overloaded that one, Rabbi. They shoved three questions into one. The Heavenly Tribunal is pulling a fast one on us!’

‘Rabbi, read it again.’

Rabbi Meyerson does read it again, stopping on, accentuating, each of the three clauses: ‘Were you: a) true to yourself, by, b) doing what you were meant to do, and c) doing your best with what you were given?’

‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t given much,’ says Nadler, picking up on the last clause. ‘So yeah, I did my best with it. Made the most of it. More than the most of it. I recognized who and what I was and went with it. A clever scammer. A hondler. A shyster. A schnorrer. A schlemiel. Does that get me in?’

Rabbi Meyerson smiles. Presumably they all know the answer to that.

‘I’m wrestling with b,’ says Phil Steinerman, ‘doing what you were meant to do’. I mean, the weird thing is, the feeling I always had growing up, was I think I was meant to be a thief. I think I was following my destiny. And destiny has to be something the Heavenly Tribunal understands. Hell, the heavenly tribunal is probably writing our destiny. So they knew what I was going to do before I did it.’

‘Phil, I think you’ve just found an ingenious new way of letting yourself off the hook,’ says Sorcher.

‘The old written-in-the-stars defense,’ says Rosen.

‘I’m saying, maybe it was,’ says Steinerman. ‘And I can’t really know, until I get to the Heavenly Tribunal and ask them, right? We can’t presume to judge from down here. From the position of mere mortals.’

‘OK,’ says Nadler, raising his new post-incarceration mass out of the folding chair. ‘That’s it for me. It just went too metaphysical for me. See you in the yard, Jewboys.’

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘Another day.’

A clattering of metal as they each fold their chairs, stack them in the corner.

‘The Seven Questions of the Heavenly Tribunal. Interesting, Rabbi. Thanks.’

* * *

Rabbi Morton Meyerson heads back to his cell.

He has to admit it. He loves these discussions. Loves them.

This is why he joined the Rabbinate in the first place.

This is the kind of discussion, the kind of gratification, he never got from his New Jersey congregation.

All those nice middle-class hardworking Jews had sat there mute, stiff, terrified at his attempts at Talmudic discussion.

But these guys – this is what he always wanted. Animated, hilarious, serious, accusatory, inquisitive, dismissive, raucous, genuinely curious, totally game. To some degree, they’re all the same, his minyanim. They look alike. Sound alike. Transposable quick wits, interchangeable one-liners, you could easily lose track of who said what. In a medium or maximum security federal prison, they’d be called a wolf pack – and be feared. In here, though, the wolves slouch, joke, take a long nap. And when these wolves howl, it’s with laughter.

He wonders, of course: If he he’d had a congregation like this all along – engaged, participatory, alive – would he have done what he’d done?

It’s the Eighth Question, he muses. His own personal eighth question at the gates of heaven. If this had been the tenor of his congregation, would he have embezzled the money? Or would he have been satisfied enough with his spiritual life, and therefore not distracted by – and sucked into – the material world which so flagrantly consumed his congregation.

All those blank, well-scrubbed, expensively lifted and Botoxed faces staring back vacantly from the pews. Their pasted-on smiles clouding over in anxious discomfort, in censorious scowls, at the least bit of thinking or challenge from his pulpit. Anything that diverged from reassurance was unwelcome, and he would hear about it shortly, and sharply.

Had all the social climbing, the favor-currying, the ceaseless and senseless infighting among the members, finally just gotten to him? Had he wanted to get even financially because it was the only form of currency the congregation would understand? Was it, at some level, simply to wake them up – even if it took the theft of millions to do it? It might have been worth it, he reflects, to see their faces finally registering something authentic – variously shock, rage, disappointment, shame – but at least something.

He pulls abstractly but fondly on the beard he has grown at Otisville. He’d always been clean-shaven before, even as a rabbinical student. Clean-cut was what a suburban reform Jewish congregation wanted, he knew. For their rabbi to look like any other lawyer or broker or financial type getting off the commuter train, to fit in, be a good neighbor, go with the communal flow. In here, he gets to be what he really is. Gets to look the part for the first time in his life.

His sentence will be up next year.

He’s already decided. He’ll volunteer to come up and continue leading the discussions. He hopes the warden and Federal Board of Corrections are open to that. He doesn’t see why not.

He loves these felons. They’re family. He’d go to the mat for them.

Otisville can weigh on a man.

But on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings, Otisville Correctional, for Rabbi Meyerson, is the best place on the planet.

jujubees redux

(Matt Sorcher: fraud, four years. Operated a chain of tax return centers that skimmed government refunds)

Both parents, pharmacists. Two uncles, chiropractors. Another uncle, an acupuncturist and naturopath. His first cousin has a therapeutic massage practice and online supplements business. Matt Sorcher’s whole family is dedicated to healing, but nobody is an actual doctor.

Nobody had the patience or the grades or the tolerance for debt, from what Matt can tell, but a lot of them put Doctor in front of their names anyway, to feel the prestige of the D and R. And they’ve all got some kind of professional licensing from the state, and some kind of diploma on the wall, and the autonomy of a small business. So everyone’s operating within the system, but with their own businesses, they’ve got some wiggle room to work the system a little. That’s the culture Matt Sorcher grew up in.

As pharmacists, his parents never earned a lot, but always earned enough. This is in the days, he remembers, when local pharmacists were mostly Jews or Italians, which was before they were Indians and Pakistanis, which was before they were Chinese, which was before they were Nigerians. His parents defined middle class – in income, values, clothes, haircuts: every way possible. His older and younger sister both turned out to be stars – a corporate lawyer, a private equity investor. He was the presence that everyone kind of…well…tolerated. He started as the golden boy, but quickly became the troublesome middle child.

A middle child in a middle-class household in the middle of Long Island – was there some unconscious yearning in him to escape the middle, no matter what? Yet even in here, he’s ended up in the middle. His fraudulent tax centers conviction – compared to the elaborate felonies around him – is totally conventional and unremarkable. A low-end, low-interest, low-achieving crime. Middle of the pack, at best.

His straight-arrow pharmacist parents had locked up all the medications and ingredients every night, double-checked the locks and the security cameras like it was a jewelry business. Made a high art of responsibility. His father served as president of the temple, his mother chaired the Sisterhood. As if with every moment and measure of their lives, they were daring him…daring him…tempting him…to screw up. He eventually obliged.

We learn about work from our fathers, Matt thinks. Watching them shower, shave, grab their briefcase. Internalizing their attitudes. Your whole adult working life is probably determined by whether your Dad smiled with adventure or frowned with grim pain as he headed off to work. Or was it just relief to get out of the house and away from the wife? Of course his own dad never got away from his wife. They worked together.

His parents’ first pharmacy was in a strip mall in Syosset. Long Island was ground zero for consumer culture. A land mass developed entirely by the post-World War II economic boom. Cars, shopping, houses thrown up in Levittown to accommodate returning GI’s and their young families. Driveways, highways, vistas of shimmering blacktop and neon invitation. His parents would try to escape it every so often in the dark-paneled dim sanctuary of the temple, but if they thought that would hold at bay the bright alluring flashing consumer culture surrounding them, they were sorely mistaken.

Their pharmacy, after all, was all stuff. Promises of health, happy photos on products and boxes; this is what he saw growing up, stocking shelves; this is all he knew. And the gleaming cars pulling into and out of the parking spaces in front, the boisterous families hopping in and out, mothers and daughters checking themselves in the car’s rear-view mirrors, side mirrors, in the pharmacy’s tall mirrors at the ends of the aisles; this is all he saw. From the time he was five years old, helping in the pharmacy.

They opened a second pharmacy when he was nine. He went along when they looked at space, overheard their negotiations for the rent, witnessed their excitement, their anxiety, saw the new store go in, saw them place the signs, arrange the aisles for maximal sales – all of which they explained to him.

His mother continued to manage the first store, his dad took over the second, they worked long hours, and got divorced a few years after that. Each took one of the stores, and then competed with each other. First subtly, then openly. Matt was soon part of that competition, like any other product on the shelves, each of his parents trying to win him over, to make the sale over the other.

There were no family picnics or nature hikes or outings to the beautiful, still bare, undeveloped beaches at the end of Long Island; there was no time. There was only time enough to work, to make money, to save it.

His parents must have felt guilty about that – no time for family, or leisure, or nature – and must have felt guilt about the divorce, because that’s when they sent him off to Camp Wikiwandi in the New Hampshire woods.