Inmates Mark Passover as They Pass Time in L.A. County Jail

Even before the blessing of the wine--the Kiddush-- Rabbi Mika M. Weiss opened the Seder with a lecture.

“Passover celebrates freedom from slavery,” he said, plastic cup of grape juice in one hand and paperback Haggadah, a Passover prayer book, in the other. “You should appreciate your freedom--in spite of the fact you are here.”

At a ritual already rich in symbolism, the rabbi stated the obvious. His guests were 25 Jewish Los Angeles County Jail inmates, briefly released from their dorms to celebrate the ancient Hebrews’ escape from Egyptian slavery and 40-year odyssey in the desert.

In a spartan room at Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic, wearing jail-issue jumpsuits and watched over by armed deputies, the men smiled in sardonic appreciation.

“ Baruch atah Adonai, elohainu melech ha-olam . . .” the rabbi began, finally returning to the Kiddush. “Blessed art thou O Lord Our God, who gave us the fruit of the vine.”

“Yeah, this is my first Seder in prison and I’ll probably be going to a lot of them,” said Jacques, a 24-year-old ex-prostitute with large brown eyes and a strawberry blond ponytail. “I’m in for armed robbery and auto theft, but I’m looking at life without parole because of my background, a murder.”

He had just had sex with “John Something-or-other”--he never learned his last name--when Jacques found a bottle of AZT medicine, revealing his pickup had AIDS. “I just snapped and broke his neck,” Jacques said flatly as he waited patiently for the Seder chicken soup. Before his arrest, he continued, he was a religious Jew.

“When I was on the streets, I’d find a synagogue every Friday night.”

In stereotypical thinking, “Jewish criminal” is an oxymoron. What about all those doctors and lawyers? And the handful of mumzers who do break the law either do it in such a spectacularly bloodless and clever way (Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky) that they go straight to some federal country club prison and--let’s be honest--win some measure of grudging admiration.

But a couple dozen schlemiels stuck in county jail? A shanda , an embarrassment, almost laughable. Until they talk about the crimes they committed out of anger or desperation, and how they’ve survived in the dangerous divisions of prison life.

“I always thought we were also a minority and that others would treat us the same,” said the Iranian-born Siamak, 31. A Ph.D. candidate in physics, he said he was serving time for possessing $5-million worth of clothing he hadn’t known was stolen.

“But as soon as they find out you’re Jewish, they gang up on you.”

“The indignity is the worst thing,” said William, a 72-year-old convicted slumlord. “If you’re in jail, you’re scum.”

Although Jewish criminals are but a fraction of the country’s prison population--about 70 of Los Angeles County’s 23,000 jail inmates and about 1.5% nationwide--their numbers are growing as traditional Jewish family life wanes, says social worker Mel Borses.

“It’s a moving away from the old spiritual principles, from the schtetl (village) principles I grew up with in the Bronx,” said Borses, who attended the Seder at Pitchess.

Many of the imprisoned men and women Borses counsels for Jewish agencies are addicts--drug users, alcoholics or gamblers. Many came from families where there was “some kind of meshuggas ,” or craziness, as Borses put it.

Rejection seems a common thread. “I have two sons,” one convict’s mother told Borses in a family therapy session. “A lawyer, and him .”

However they wound up there, the Jewish inmates received little respite from captivity.

Unopened boxes of matzo were placed before them, apparently to take back to their cells, but none of the “bread of affliction” was served as an accompaniment to the prayers. The inmates were not served the traditional four cups of wine (canned grape juice in this case) so essential to a Seder, until after the ceremony. The table, covered in a gold-colored cloth, was devoid of the symbolic plate containing a lamb shank, roasted egg and bitter herbs.

Prayers and songs were greatly abbreviated. Weiss, a Hungarian native who survived both Hitler and Stalin, led a fast-forward Seder that repeatedly reminded the inmates of their personal failings and their country’s largess.

“You are here through your own fault, and the government gives a Seder to you,” the rabbi said before the traditional reading of the Four Questions.

“ Mah nish ta-nah ha lai-lah ha-zeh mi-kol ha-ley lot ?” an Israeli-born cocaine addict chanted in Hebrew. “Why is this night different from all others?”

The song that drew out the most voices was the mournful spiritual in English, “Let My People Go!”:

“When Israel was in Egypt land, let my people go!

“Oppressed so hard they could not stand, let my people go.”

At Seder’s end, the inmates received small portions of roasted chicken, canned corn, and gefilte fish on plastic plates.

“Enjoy your dinner!” the rabbi bid them. “Only in America!”