Walking across the prison concourse, Paul was suddenly thrown to the ground. A skinhead with a swastika tattoo, the leader of the White Supremacist gang, glared down at him. “I never want to see you wearing that thing again,” he spat. “If you do, I’ll kill you.”

Paul had just received his kippah in a care package from the Aleph Institute, an organization that provides emotional, spiritual, and financial support to individuals behind bars and their families. That night, he stayed awake in his bunk, wondering if he should give in to the neo-Nazi’s threat, contemplating the choices that had landed him in this situation in the first place.

Paul grew up in a typical Suburban California Jewish household. He was 8 when his grandmother moved in, bringing a host of “crazy” Jewish traditions with her. On Saturdays, she would hide the car keys and unplug the TV, which drove Paul and his parents mad. When Paul turned 13, his grandmother snuck him out for a secret bar mitzvah. When his father found out, he was so enraged that he hit him. For Paul, Judaism was a burden; something to be kept secret.

As a teenager, he wrestled with insecurity and self-loathing, turning to drugs to dull the pain, and then to petty crime to sustain his habit. “You’re a druggie, a thief, and a cheat,” he would tell himself. But the self-hatred only drove him to commit more crimes, and the vicious cycle continued. Paul was in and out of county jail several times, and then served a five-year stint in a state prison...READ MORE