Today’s New York Times reports on the religious accommodations for Jewish inmates in the prison at which President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen hopes to serve his three year sentence:
What the minimum-security camp at the Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, N.Y., does offer is a rarity in the federal prison system: a full-time Hasidic chaplain who oversees a congregation of dozens of Jewish inmates who gather for prayer services three times a day.
“For a Jewish person, there is no place like Otisville,” said Earl Seth David, 54, a former inmate who attended kosher meals, religious classes and weekly Shabbat services in the prison shul, a shared space where the Torah scrolls are locked up every night….
Orthodox inmates wear fringed vests known as zizit under their green prison uniforms. Prison work shifts are scheduled around daily prayer sessions and Sabbath observances. Before many holidays, the men are taken by prison bus to a nearby town for traditional mikvah baths….
Over the years, federal officials have “sort of carved this place out as a special location to put Jewish inmates,” said Benjamin Brafman, a prominent defense lawyer who has represented numerous defendants who have requested Otisville.