A Jewish Venezuelan man imprisoned in an Alabaman prison is claiming that he is not being served kosher food and has filed a suit with a U.S. District Court, reports the Huntsville Times. However, according to the spokeswoman of the county’s sheriff department, all food at the prison is prepared on site and meets the legal requirement for being kosher.
Rafael Alberto Lloveras Linares came to the U.S. from Venezuela legally but overstayed his visa in 1995. He was arrested in 2010 and ordered to be deported. Yet he has since then, refused to board the plane for deportation on three separate occasions. Mr. Linares has applied for asylum more than once, citing alleged dangers to his life as a Jew living in Venezuela.
(Aliza Levine – YWN)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
4 Responses
Before anyone takes action, it might be worthwhile to investigate his Jewishness. It won’t take long.
Some years ago, I was offered a volunteer chaplain’s position at a state prison. When I received the list of the dozen-or-so prisoners who had called themselves Jewish, I noted that nearly all of them had obviously non-Jewish names. When I pointed this out to the head chaplain, he chuckled and said, “Of course, they’re not Jewish. They just want better food!” I declined the position.
If this person is really Jewish, why is he demanding kosher food? In other words, what is a Jew doing in prison in the first place?
Yosef Stern-
A Jew that was zoche to stand at Har Sinai went to jail. Don’t believe me? Read this week’s Parsha1
Second, Are you Jewish? Using your logic-What is Jew doing speaking lashon Hara on the internet for the 7 billion people on earth to read, about a person in a situation that he knows almost nothing about.
Thirdly. The answer to your question. He is jail for the same reason we have yom kippur. He has a yetzer hara and so do we. Ours might not get us to do things that land us in jail, but some do. And just because his yetzer hara got the best of him one time doesn’t mean he isn’t fighting his yetzer hara in regards to food.
Personally, I have no yetzer hara to smoke, but I do for other things. And some smokers out there may have mastered parts of yiddeshkeit that I haven’t. Whose better? Whose worse? Let’s leave that for Hashem to decide.
#1 & #2 –
History has plenty of examples of both small time and big time Jewish criminals, and names are nothing to go by in determining the Jewishness of someone.
The only question is “was his/her mom Jewish” and not “was the dad called Jones or Goldberg”.