Q&A with Rabbi Mendy Katz, Director of Prison Outreach at the Aleph Institute
Q: While everybody else is busy cleaning out their pantries, can you describe what your Pesach preparations look like?
A: Well, it actually begins four months before Pesach, when I start confirming with our manufacturers that they can create specific products in the quantities we need for Pesach. The Aleph Institute sends shelf-stable seders (including marror, charoses, shank bones, boiled eggs, onions, salt water, shmurah matzah, and grape juice) to thousands of Jewish people in prisons and military bases around the world. Obviously, this is no simple undertaking. A lot of products just don’t exist in the market, so we have to create them from scratch.
Q: What kinds of products?
A: This year, we wanted to create freeze-dried marror and charoses. By Divine Providence, we were made aware of a Jewish company that makes freeze-dried food, and we asked them if they could help us. They made a prototype and sent us a sample, and Baruch Hashem it came out perfect.
We asked another manufacturer if they could supply us with kosher-for-Pesach macaroons in something other than a tin can. Prisons don’t allow metal packaging, so this was another unique product we created.
We buy thousands of shelf-stable kosher for Pesach meals in a box, including roast chicken, chicken soup, and beef stuffed cabbage. They even make gefilte fish in a shelf-stable box.
After months of back-and-forth, we finally got all our products delivered to a warehouse in New Jersey. The morning after Purim, I took an early flight from Miami to New Jersey and began personally supervising the packing of all the shipments.
Q: Where are you shipping these shelf-stable seder plates to, and in what quantities?
A: We ship to Jewish people in prisons across the country and service members and military recruits around the world. This year, we received requests from Poland, Iraq, Jordan, South Korea, England, Italy, and Japan—to name a few.
In total, we sent over 9,000 pounds of matzah, 1400 pounds of shmurah matzah, 1,000 shelf-stable seder plates, thousands of packages of macaroons, hundreds of cases of gefilte fish, 7,000 plastic bottles of horseradish sauce and 2,000 Haggadahs to prisons and military bases worldwide in 2024. Requests are still coming in this week, and we are racing the clock to get supplies to people in time.
Q: That sounds like an expensive undertaking. How much does all this cost?
A: Aleph’s Pesach Fund is over $300,000. One of our biggest costs is shipping, which at times costs more than the products themselves. For example, a case of grape juice alone is $75 to ship overseas! But we know that these people would not have Pesach without us, so we are happy to do it. It takes “if not you, who?” to a whole new level.
Q: Can you describe the impact receiving a seder-in-a-box has on an incarcerated man or woman?
A: Pesach is one of the hardest Yomim Tovim to celebrate behind bars. You’re supposed to be reliving the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery, but you find yourself trapped in an “Egypt” of sorts. You’ve been stripped of all your belongings, you’ve been isolated from your family, and you’ve been dehumanized. In that context, the fact that they can celebrate Pesach—not just in a perfunctory way but with a beautiful seder plate, four cups of grape juice, and a Haggadah—gives them a powerful sense of inner freedom.
As one man wrote to us last year: “It is here that we see the light, the light that you and the Aleph Family have shone on us. It is here that we have learned who we always were and, more importantly, who we still are—Hashem’s children. It is here that we shall celebrate the Exodus from Mitzrayim, and it is here that, tonight, we shall pray for our personal Exodus and for Moshiach now.”
These kinds of heartwarming messages make everything we do at Aleph worth it.
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