The ways Wisconsin Department of Corrections guidelines affect Jewish prisoners and proposals for strengthening the state’s child abuse laws were the main topics of discussion at the Wisconsin Jewish Conference board of directors meeting Sunday.
Meeting at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, representatives of six of the conference’s 16-member communities discussed WJC activities on these and other issues, and collaboration with the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis on these two subjects particularly.
At present, according to WJC executive director Michael Blumenfeld, the Dept. of Corrections guidelines are administrative rules enacted without involving the state legislature. These rules and the ways wardens interpret them hurt members of smaller religious groups in the state’s prisons, including the some two dozen Jews there now, he said.
Barbara Kuhn of Oshkosh said that two people from Congregation B’nai Israel there have long been involved in holding holidays services and a Passover seder at the medium security Oshkosh Correctional Institution.
But recently, she said, their efforts are being frustrated by new rules about having a minimum number of inmates for religious services, over-intensive examinations of prayer books and ritual objects and a prohibition on bringing in foods, which prevented holding a seder there last Passover.
Blumenfeld said the Dept. of Corrections has appointed a Religious Practices Advisory Committee to review these issues whose members include Rabbi Dena Feingold, spiritual leader of Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha and former WCR president, and Rabbi Leonard J. Lewy, director of Milwaukee’s Jewish Chaplaincy Program, as an alternate.
Blumenfeld added that he expects the task force will “work out a compromise” within “maybe a year.”
The legislation to strengthen the state’s child abuse laws is being worked on by Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and Rep. Margaret Krusick (D-Milwaukee). Blumenfeld said such legislation could be introduced when the new legislature convenes in January.
Issues directly affecting the Jewish community include a proposed requirement that clergy report suspected child abuse or neglect to the authorities, which is not required now. This raises questions both of confidentiality and the extent to which a religious institution may be held liable for either an abusing clergy member or a clergy member’s failure to report.
Arden Muchin of Manitowoc, an attorney, pointed out that a lawsuit against a small synagogue in such circumstances “could bankrupt an entire [Jewish] community.”
Paula Simon, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, emphasized to general agreement that on this topic the conference should “make sure the rabbis have input,” and that it would be “awkward” for the WJC and Wisconsin Council of Rabbis to have contrasting positions.
The Wisconsin Jewish Conference is a program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation that links state Jewish communities; engages in coalition building, education and outreach; and monitors state legislative and lobbying activities.
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