"Wishing Our Clients, Students Southfield Man & Staff Befriends Prisoner A Very Healthy & Happy New p Year." REBECCA WALDMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS joe corneU stud ios , 29936 Orchard Lake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48334 (810) 626-1100 Cookie, Doris And The Staff Of Bloomfield-Keego Resale Shop Wish Everyone A Happy, Healthy And Prosperous New Year! 3425 Orchard Lake Rd., Keego Harbor (at Commerce Rd.) Mon.-Sat. 10-5 By Appointment Only 681-5424 Wishing All Our Friends A Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year FLORENCE ABEL, JUDY STEIN & MERLE SOLWAY A ■ RE 13 CARPET wim 1 1. 855-9100 KEIM 5635 Maple Rd., West Bloomfield rison inmates who change deeply into Judaism. He is work- religions is not a new sto- ing with Rabbi Yisroel Wein- ry. Malcolm X converted to garten, a Lubavitch rabbi in Islam in jail, and it became Flint, toward having an Ortho- the major force in his life and dox conversion. "He's a very sincere individ- work. But the story of Douglas ual," Rabbi Weingarten says. Burgess, an inmate at Saginaw "He's really going for it, and is Regional Facility in Freeling, has ambitious to get this done." Rabbi Weingarten was im- a bit of a twist. Having served 10 years of a life sentence for mur- pressed to learn from the prison der, he is converting to Judaism chaplain that Mr. Burgess wears — for the second time. And help- a kippah and has earned the re- ing him through the process is a spect of other inmates. Rabbi Weingarten says Mr. 91-year-old Southfield resident, Neil Kalef, whom Mr. Burgess Burgess' status as an inmate will not be a deterrant to conversion. calls his friend and mentor. "There is something called The two corresponded for more than four years before meeting teshuvah, which is repentance," he says. "It's definitely applica- this past July. "I was so excited," Mr. Kalef ble in this case. There's so much said of the two-hour visit. "The evening I came home, I kept thinking about it. It was like a tape rewinding on another reel. I felt so close to him. "He's a brilliant chap," Mr. Kalef says. "He's a great guy. I feel he's genuine." Mr. Kalef met Mr. Burgess by responding to a Jewish News ar- ticle about a B'nai B'rith pen-pal program for incarcerated•Jews. But when Mr. Kalef read the pris- oner's name on a letter from the organization, he was puzzled. "I wrote him that it seemed to OtioutV.V, me by his name that he wasn't Jew- ish," Mr. Kalef says. "He wrote back itat 4411"Y that yes, it was true, his name isn't Jewish, but he was in the process of converting to Judaism." Born a Catholic, Mr. Burgess worked with Reform Rabbi Bruce Aft for his first conversion while at Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula. He stud- ied for four years before his Aug. 12, 1992 ceremony, which in- cluded symbolic circumcision and Douglas Burgess a triple immersion in the prison's involved here, what we could call shower-turned-mikvah. Since then, Mr. Burgess `red tape.' But there's a lot of po- earned a bachelor's degree in ed- tential." Throughout this process, Mr. ucation through a correspondence course and wrote a book on prison Kalefs role has been one of friend- life. He was transferred to Sagi- ship and guidance. He sent Mr. naw Regional Facility in Decem- Burgess tzitzit and supported him ber 1993, where he is secretary when the Department of Correc- to the chaplain and prison li- tions refused for security reasons brarian. He has confided to Mr. to let him receive tefillin, the Kalef his ambition to become a leather straps and boxes worn during morning prayers. prison chaplain himself. "I was involved just with the "He's self-taught," Mr. Kalef says. "You can tell by the way he correspondence," Mr. Kalef says. got his degree in education at a "He asks questions in every let- correspondence college. You've ter — what's with this, what's got to be really interested in with that — and I do my best to learning to do something like answer. Sometimes I have to look up in the Mishnah what he's talk- that." His ambition to be a Jewish ing about." Mr. Kalefs Orthodox upbring- prison chaplain pulled him more Neil Kalef ing serves as a model for Mr. Burgess' new lifestyle in prison. In his first letter, Mr. Kalef wrote that at 86, he attends synagogue daily and lays tefillin six days a week. He advised Mr. Burgess to be patient with his own spiritual development. 'There's no instant anything, except coffee," he wrote. Mr. Kalef says he speaks about his pen pal with friends. And on July 19, he did more than talk. With his son and daughter-in- law, Maynard and Nancy, he traveled to the Saginaw prison to connect a face to the four-year- old letter collection. "We shook hands," Mr. Kalef says. "We sat at a little table. I ex- pected to sit across from him with a screen between us, like you see in the movies. I was surprised to be in this great, big room, with a pop machine and people sitting around tables, about 40 or 45 peo- ple. Children came to visit their parents. He was wearing regular jeans and a shirt— no prison uni- form." They talked like old friends, be- cause they knew so much about each other. The two-hour visit flew by. "It was quite an emotionally charged meeting between a 29- year-old inmate and a 91-year- old man," Mr. Kalef says. Mr. Burgess hopes to be eligi- ble for parole in four or five years. His pen pal looks forward to maintaining the friendship out- side of prison. "I feel I've helped him, and he feels it too," Mr. Kalef says. "It's an experience, one in a million, that people don't get."