Religious Books Banned in Prisons; Islam Blamed

I recently came across an article from the Jewish Week discussing the newest victims to the war on terror: prison inmates.

Prisons have enacted regulations to limit the amount of religious texts accessible to prison inmates, removing all but 150 books per religion from prison chapels. As the Jewish Week explains, prison officials are fearful that religious texts, particularly Muslim books, are used to promote violence in prisons. As a result, religious texts have been banned and removed, leaving some Jewish prisoners without access to even the Torah. As the author laments, "Jewish inmates appear to have become the unintended victims."

We must question, though, why Muslims are the intended victims of these regulations.

According to an article by FoxNews, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Feldman told U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain that the removal stemmed from a Department of Justice review done in April of 2004 of the way prisons choose Muslim religious service providers. Feldman said that the study was done because of a concern that prisons "had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large."

It scares me that our very own government, our own Department of Justice issues reports implying that Islam is a religion that incites violence and poses a threat to our country.

What scares me even more is that our government is in the business of limiting what we are allowed to read.

Barbie Discovers Her Jewish Identity

When I was reading The Jewish Week today I noticed an article about a new barbie doll that has been created, one that is an Orthodox Jew. The Barbie comes complete with tefillin, tallit, leather straps, siddur, and Steinsaltz Gemara, and will even come with a Torah scroll for an extra charge. Jen Friedman, the creator of the doll, came up with the idea through conversations with her friends. She states that “we thought it would be fun to put tefillin on a Barbie.” And that's exactly what she did. So far only 2 have been made, the first one being sold on ebay for $150. She will have to make more because she has at least 20 more outstanding orders.

The creator describes herself as a “post-demoninational, halachically observant Jew” who believes in gender equality. This is of course evident in her doll, who she describes as a Modern Orthodox Jew and wears all the prayer items that men traditionally would. Jen states on her website though that the doll is not comfortable in a kippah, and hence wears a beret. I'm not sure I've figured out the reasoning behind this yet.

The profits from the doll go towards making tefillin available to women who would otherwise not be able to buy their own.

If you want to find out more, visit Jen Friedman’s website.