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elk about struggling for free-
dom. Louis Ferrante has been
there.
At Passover, he often thinks about his
"trip through the iron furnace,' his 81/2
years in prison, where he served time
for armed robbery, credit card fraud
and racketeering. This year marked
Ferrante's fifth Passover "on this side of
the wall:' He has been celebrating the
holiday since 1998, when he began the
process of converting to Judaism, while
behind bars.
Unlocked: My Journey from Prison
to Proust (HarperCollins; $25.95) is
Ferrante's memoir of his years on the
street as part of the Gambino crime
family, the investigations into his
crimes and his years in prison, where
he became a voracious reader of Tolstoy
and Cervantes as well as Jewish his-
tory and Torah. Unlocked has been
optioned for a feature film by Lorraine
Bracco (who played the therapist in The
Sopranos).
When asked in an interview about
what freedom means to him, Ferrante
replies, "Had I not gone to prison
and experienced all that I had, I may
have lived out my life in ignorance, a
set of light chains. Freedom exists in
the mind; I felt more freedom while
cramped in a cell than most people will
experience in their entire lives:'
As he explains, reading set him free.
When his books were taken away by
prison guards, he'd turn to writing.
"They couldn't take away what I had
up here;' he adds, pointing to his head
of dark short-cropped hair.
This writer met with Ferrante in a
Manhattan cafe, while he was visiting
from the new home he shares with his
girlfriend in the Catskills. He paid for
coffee with his credit card, and then
joked that he used to carry only cash
and isn't used to having credit cards in
his pocket.
"At least not my own:' he quipped.
Ferrante is candid, articulate, ener-
getic and warm — a very likeable fel-
low with a lot to say. He enjoys talking
about his theology That he is a lover of
books is clear from the way he speaks
of them — and quotes from them with
ease.
"He has a rough exterior, but you
can sit down and talk about philoso-
phy, literature, poetry and anything in
Judaism," says Rabbi Arthur Rulnick,
who formally converted Ferrante to
Judaism after he was released from
prison. The two men have remained
in close contact. In a telephone con-
versation from his home in Baltimore,
Rabbi Rulnick, who retired from the
Woodbury Jewish Center on Long
Island, explains that he'd heard of
jailhouse conversions and never took
them seriously. But that changed when
he encountered Ferrante. "I don't think
I've ever met a layperson who knows
as much about Jewish history and the
Bible as he does:'
Now in his late 30s, Ferrante grew
up in an Italian Catholic family in
Flushing, Queens, with crosses on the
walls, statues of saints and his own
rosary beads, but no books. His father
read the racing forms; his mother read
magazines she picked out of the trash
in front of a doctor's office; and he
cheated his way through school without
ever reading. The family didn't go to
church much. He speaks lovingly of his
late mother, who was very open-mind-
ed and taught him to be the same way.
He took care of his mother when she
was suffering from cancer, and she died
in his arms. That was when he gave up
on God, and that's when he dates the
time he "went astray" He saw people
doing bad things and driving big cars
and living in large homes, saw good
folks driving buses and living simply,
and he chose the former route.
Speaking for his friends, he writes,
"The streets, the whole mob thing,
gave us a sense of honor and camara-
derie we needed. An 18-year-old in the
Midwest, searching for these same feel-
ings, might join the Army or Marines.
In our neighborhood, we threw in with
the Mafia."
On the streets, Ferrante had a good
name among fellow wiseguys. And
when he was arrested, he wouldn't
rat on friends and associates in the
Gambino family. He was sentenced to
serve in various maximum-security
prisons, living among men serving life
sentences who had nothing to lose.
There, he faced uprisings, sexual threats
and killings.
Once, when he took the rap for some-