The Chronicle first learned of the situation in an e-mail sent by Rivka Rachel late Sunday, Nov. 16. Rachel asserted that Naomi Isaacson, a young attorney and observant Jew, had been arrested the previous Friday and was “being held without being charged with any crime.”
Rachel said Isaacson had requested kosher meals, but had been refused them by jail authorities.
Rachel, a research physician employed by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., told The Chronicle in a later e-mail that Isaacson “is a friend of mine who is Jewish. I have known Naomi for many years, from the time I attended undergrad and medical school in Milwaukee about 20 years ago.”
Rachel expressed concern for Isaacson’s health as well as her civil rights, saying that Isaacson’s attorney, Alan Eisenberg of Milwaukee, visited Isaacson at the jail on Sunday and told NBC Channel 26, “After three days of starvation Naomi’s head is drooping, she appears frail, fragile and pale.
The Chronicle spoke with Isaacson by telephone on Monday this week and she confirmed the contents of Rachel’s e-mail.
She said she informed the jail official who booked her into the facility on Friday that she needed kosher food and was told they had no such food available.
After repeated appeals from herself, her family and Eisenberg, a lieutenant on duty at the jail on Saturday evening relented and allowed Isaacson’s sister, Nara Kincseth of Shawano, to buy fruit and kosher canned goods and bring them to the jail, Isaacson said. She was permitted to eat one orange and drink a bottle of water.
The decision to allow her to eat the food her sister brought was overruled the next morning by the captain in charge of the jail, Isaacson said. She said she did not have anything else to eat during her stay there, which lasted until Monday morning, Nov. 17.
Isaacson said she believes that she was being discriminated against because she is Jewish. “I think, underneath, more than people want to admit, there are anti-Semitic feelings. If they can accommodate a vegetarian, they can accommodate a vegan, they can accommodate people with allergies — what I was asking for was nothing [more than that].”
Eisenberg, in a telephone interview with The Chronicle on Nov. 19, explained that Isaacson is the CEO of a non-profit, educational and charitable organization called the Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology, Inc., (SIST) that exists primarily to support a university by the same name in India.
SIST was founded by Indian native Rama Behar, who, according to a variety of newspaper accounts, changed his name to Samanta Roy in 1990 and then to Avraham Cohen in 2007. He lives in Baltimore, Eisenberg said.
According to an Associated Press report published Nov. 14, “the institute, which also has been identified as The Disciples of the Lord Jesus, has operated in Shawano since the 1970s under the leadership of a religious immigrant from India.”
Both Eisenberg and Isaacson denied that the Disciples of the Lord Jesus is the same organization or that it was headed by the man now named Avraham Cohen.
The non-profit organization that Isaacson heads owns 12 businesses in Shawano and Eisenberg has worked as Isaacson’s attorney for business litigation for the past year and a half, he said.
Isaacson, a resident of Minneapolis, was arrested in Shawano by U.S. Marshals for not responding properly or in a timely way to a subpoena for documents related to a business that is owned by the institute.
Brown County Jail authorities Capt. John Jadin, the jail division director, and David Konrath, a public information officer, spoke with The Chronicle by telephone last week.
Both asserted that Isaacson never told jail authorities that she wanted or needed kosher food and that if she had clearly requested kosher meals, she would have received them.
Referring to the food Isaacson ate on Saturday night, Jadin, said, “I know she had some items that she ate. But my belief is the majority of the short period of time that she was here, she refused her tray.”
Jadin said that jail officials need to hear about special meal requests directly from detainees. “The reason for that is that we want to ascertain exactly what are the needs that we may have to accommodate … so that we don’t have a constantly shifting target.”
Konrath said, “Inmates have the ability to change their beliefs at a drop of a hat. If they come in as a Southern Baptist and decide they want to be Muslim, we’re not going to debate that with them.
“If they want a Muslim diet we will comply with that diet. And I believe that’s pretty much what the current law is when it comes to the PLRA [The Prison Litigation Reform Act] and we’re fully compliant with it.”
He added that the Brown County Jail’s food is provided by the food service firm Aramark, which is equipped to supply kosher and other special meals.
After Isaacson was transferred to prisons in Milwaukee, Kenosha and finally Oklahoma City, according to Eisenberg, a judge in Baltimore ordered her released on Thursday, Nov. 20. She was released in Oklahoma City, Eisenberg said.
Isaacson said that she is still suffering emotional and physical effects of the treatment she received.
Loading ...