A California Rabbi’s Mission Behind Prison Walls: Rabbi Yochanan Friedman

00:00 Speaker 1 I guess when you're thinking about serious criminals, what do you expect? What can you hope for?

00:06 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Manis Friedman.

00:08 Speaker 1 That they will no longer be violent, they will no longer be a danger to society.

00:13 Speaker 2 Friedman is known the world over for his opinions on many issues. Lately, he's become passionate about helping violent criminals in California's prison system see themselves in a different light.

00:26 Speaker 1 How much can you expect? How much improvement? You hope they become a little less violent? Okay, that would be an accomplishment, but what this did was far beyond that.

00:36 Speaker 2 What Friedman is referring to is a new prison program he's quite involved in. It's based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It just so happens that it was incubated in a California prison by his son, Rabbi Yochanan Friedman, and a small group of prisoners and former prisoners who saw a glaring need for an innovative approach to personal change. I'm Gary Wollek, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.

02:32 Speaker 3 I grew up in Minnesota.

02:34 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Yochanan Friedman. His parents are Rabbi Manis and Rebbetzin Chana Friedman. Manis is a world-famous public speaker, author, and educator. Yochanan's siblings are also well-known, and numerous. Friedman is one of 14 children.

02:50 Speaker 3 It's fantastic. Highly recommend it. You're never bored and never lonely.

02:56 Speaker 2 Yochanan witnessed and helped his parents work with Jews in Minnesota, and with the establishment of Beis Chana Institute of Jewish Studies, their groundbreaking school for Jewish women. That inspired him from a young age to become a shliach of the Rebbe.

03:12 Speaker 3 I don't ever remember considering anything else.

03:15 Speaker 2 Friedman attended yeshiva in Los Angeles, Morristown, New Jersey, and London. In the early '90s, he joined a group of yeshiva bochurim in Ukraine.

03:24 Speaker 3 The first group of bochurim to go to the former Soviet Union for yeshiva shlichus. We were kind of an experiment.

03:32 Speaker 2 The experiment was to inspire the community in any way they could. One day, an old lady walked in with a bundle under her arm.

03:40 Speaker 3 And in the bundle is a live chicken, and she says in Yiddish, "Is it true? I heard that there's a shochet in town now." Well, imagine this woman's been waiting 70 years for a shochet. One of the rabbis that helped in teaching us in the yeshiva was a shochet. He was teaching us shechita, and, uh, he shechted a chicken for her. The excitement on her face was like, "Really? A shochet?"

04:08 Speaker 2 Around the same time, Bailie Friedman was enjoying the already shochet-rich land of Brooklyn.

04:14 Speaker 4 I almost never left Crown Heights till I was maybe, like, 13 years old. I thought the world was Crown Heights. It was amazing. Life was perfect. The Rebbe was around. I had my parents, my sisters, my nieces, my nephews, my siblings, my friends. I had everything. Nothing was missing.

04:31 Speaker 2 Bailie had attended Beis Rivkah in Crown Heights for all of her young life. When she was 18 years old, she went for a year to Gothenburg to help out Rabbi Alexander and Rebbetzin Leah Namdar in their outreach to Jews in Sweden. She loved the work, but she wasn't completely comfortable in her new setting.

04:50 Speaker 4 It was like setting up shop in middle of nowhere amongst so few Frum people, so different than Crown Heights, so alone.

05:01 Speaker 2 But she wouldn't be for long. Yochanan Friedman studied for smicha while in Ukraine. He finished his tests and received his ordination in 1993. He met Bailie in 1994.

05:16 Speaker 3 And, uh, we got married in '94, which was right after Gimmel Tammuz, and nobody was sure exactly what the right thing to do was. We just kind of went ahead with it.

05:27 Speaker 2 The young couple lived in Crown Heights for a little over a year, and then moved to Minnesota, where Yochanan produced books, videotapes, and audiotapes of Manis Friedman's lectures.

05:37 Speaker 3 And it wasn't clear that, uh, I was really being effective and accomplishing what I should've.

05:43 Speaker 2 One year after Yochanan and Bailie visited Crown Heights for Sukkot, Friedman stopped at the Ohel before the trip home to Minnesota.

05:51 Speaker 3 And I remember writing in my tettel, my note that, uh, dropped into the Ohel that if our purpose is to be somewhere else, we should find out quickly From the Ohel we go to the airport, from the airport we go to the apartment in Minnesota, drop off the family, and literally go from there straight back to my office

06:09 Speaker 2 Friedman was surprised to see a young man waiting for him at his office door. He told Friedman that his father, who lived in Santa Cruz, California, had asked him to ask Friedman about finding somebody who'd be willing to move there on shlichus

06:23 Speaker 3 And my first thought was, "I asked for quick, I got quick."

06:28 Speaker 2 The Friedmans visited quickly in November 1999. They were charmed by the beach town's beauty and the local characters

06:36 Speaker 4 The weather's perfect. It's gorgeous

06:40 Speaker 2 But they were really captivated by the many opportunities for strengthening Yiddishkeit

06:44 Speaker 4 There's nothing here. There's no shul, there's no mikvah, there's no school, there's no kosher store. So it's really like Sweden in a way. It's just there's nothing here

06:57 Speaker 3 And literally by the end of that trip, I had the answer. It, it really was quite obvious to us that this is what we were supposed to do

07:04 Speaker 2 The Friedmans moved to S. Cruz in February of 2000 and began to meet the local Jewish community. Did I mention the local characters?

07:13 Speaker 4 All different types. There are surfers, there are tourists, professionals, searchers

07:19 Speaker 2 The Friedmans admit they experienced some culture shock at the outset

07:23 Speaker 4 I was sitting on a park bench with a woman who had a lot of piercings, and she looked at me and she said, "What's gonna happen first? Am I gonna become religious, or you're gonna get the piercings?"

07:36 Speaker 3 So what we found here was that it was a, an incredibly challenging shlichus environment. There's a lot of spiritual complacency here. Not that people aren't spiritual, but they feel that they already have what they're looking for spiritually, and it's not what we were selling, so to speak

07:52 Speaker 2 The Friedmans began with programs they felt would resonate with Jewish souls by providing what they didn't know they didn't have

08:00 Speaker 4 I concentrated on Shabbos. I invited people. I worked hard. I made beautiful meals, and I just wanted people to see Shabbos and experience it

08:09 Speaker 3 You start your, uh, Shabbos minyan if you can

08:12 Speaker 4 We had classes. We started a camp. We started Mommy and Me

08:16 Speaker 2 The Friedmans dubbed their Chabad house Chabad by the Sea and grew their community. But their shlichus took an unexpected turn

08:27 Speaker 3 It really started at the beginning as a, a way to bring in some extra income without stepping outside of the shlichus calling

08:35 Speaker 2 In 2008, Friedman learned about a chaplaincy job with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He took it. It was hard work. There were fewer opportunities for mitzvot than he had hoped, and a lot more violence and strife

08:51 Speaker 3 Did it for eight years, and really got kinda burnt out, and was ready to walk away

08:57 Speaker 2 Bailey says her husband made the long commute home every day with a headache. But Friedman was thinking a lot about his father's philosophy of education and rehabilitation

09:08 Speaker 3 So my father jokes that the mission is hafotzas hamayones chutzah, spreading the wellsprings of Hasidus to the outside. You wanna go to the farthest possible outside, and it turns out that the farthest possible outside is on the inside. My father, he should live and be well, has some amazing concepts and ideas. I took some of his fundamental ideas, turned it into kind of a, a self-help program based on Torah and Hasidus, and voila. I mean, the Rebbe was always in favor of prison work. This is something the Rebbe wanted

09:41 Speaker 2 But Choices for Life is a prison self-help program with a very important twist

09:47 Speaker 3 The self-help course that doesn't focus on self. All the programs that they have tell them how to find the best version of yourself, et cetera, et cetera. This program, you know, takes the concept of bitul in Hasidus and just says, "You've been thinking about yourself for what, 30, 40 years now? How's it worked out for you? Wanna try something different?"

10:06 Speaker 2 The difference, Manes Friedman says, is the strong emphasis on living a life of purpose by serving others

10:13 Speaker 3 'Cause the other programs are all focused on don't be bad. Control yourself and don't do anything bad. Well, that's not a life. When you say to an average 11-year-old child, "Can you just sit quietly and be a good boy?" Sit quietly makes you a good boy? Sit quietly and don't make trouble makes you a good dog. So even an 11-year-old, consciously or subconsciously, is insulted by that statement. To say to grown men in their 40s, 50s, 60s, "Can you just stop being bad?" What are you giving me? What are you telling me? Stay out of trouble. That's not life

10:55 Speaker 2 The Friedmans began to create a program that stressed living over mere survival. They recruited a small group of inmates with whom to brainstorm, like Jonathan Barber

11:06 Speaker 5 When I got out of high school, my priorities were pretty much distorted. I was more concerned about socializing and being like a party man, and I was pretty successful at that, but it put myself in some pretty precarious situations with the criminal justice system

11:21 Speaker 2 Jonathan says he went on a five-year binge that began when he was 19 years old

11:27 Speaker 5 Crimes ranging from drunk in public, trespassing, hit and run

11:33 Speaker 2 And then in 2003, when he was just 24, Barber was the driver in a fatal DUI auto accident. He was convicted in 2008 of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. At the outset, he showed no remorse, and he denied responsibility

11:54 Speaker 5 I allowed myself to take on this victim experience, and allowed that to fester for a couple years before I could start opening the door To truly, truly be reflective in regards to the full effect of my actions and how they affected the family and the community surrounding them.

12:14 Speaker 2 Jonathan says he read a lot of history books at the outset, and even worked toward a college degree. He began facilitating a number of self-help groups. He says that helped him to a certain degree, but several years into his prison term, one of Jonathan's friends invited him to meet a chaplain who was starting a new program. Jonathan is not Jewish, so he wasn't sure how his first meeting with Rabbi Yochanan Friedman would go.

12:40 Speaker 5 Oh, I thought he was hilarious. He has a very dry humor, which lands well with me.

12:45 Speaker 2 Jonathan and the small group workshopped Manes Friedman's ideas for almost two years.

12:51 Speaker 3 He turned out to be very helpful in that process 'cause he was really good at asking the right questions, and his insights were very helpful in shaping the program.

12:59 Speaker 5 We were looking at needs and wants, needs and desires, and how those can cause people to make wrong decisions that may ultimately hurt their higher commitments.

13:10 Speaker 2 Rabbi Manes Friedman says the program's underpinnings are straightforward and based on the teaching of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

13:18 Speaker 1 Stop asking God to give you, and offer something back in return. He's not here to serve you. You're here to serve him. I guess that's the difference between existing and living. Your existence depends on him completely. Your life is what you offer in return. So why haven't you offered anything?

13:39 Speaker 2 In 2017, Choices for Life was officially rolled out at CTF Soledad. Here's how it works. It consists of an eight-week program offered three times a year to anyone who wants to sign up. Classes meet once a week. They begin by watching a video of Rabbi Manes Friedman speaking about the program's core principles.

14:01 Speaker 1 So what is pleasure? You might say pleasure is almost synonymous with life. Being alive is pleasurable.

14:11 Speaker 2 That's followed by coursework, starting with workbook packets supporting key concepts. Rabbi Yochanan Friedman and inmate facilitators reinforce those ideas in a classroom setting, followed by a vigorous question and answer session. How do you define life? How do you define existence? What do you think being good is? What do you think being bad is? The Choices for Life program made sense to Jonathan as a facilitator and as a student.

14:42 Speaker 5 Because as I was walking through days, I wasn't fully appreciating the gift of life, and then using that gift of life for the benefit of others.

14:52 Speaker 6 I was born in the LA area, in the San Fernando Valley.

14:56 Speaker 2 That's Cory. He asked me not to use his last name. He might be the last guy you'd ever expect to end up in prison.

15:05 Speaker 6 I had a two-parent household, and I went to Jewish day school from first grade through eighth grade. I went to shul.

15:15 Speaker 2 It sounds like a pretty happy young life.

15:17 Speaker 6 Yes.

15:18 Speaker 2 But Cory says he developed a serious issue.

15:22 Speaker 6 I had this spiritual void. I was seeking materialism, I was seeking status, you know, instead of just feeling right in myself, and that later on developed into my alcoholism, which is what landed me in trouble with the law.

15:43 Speaker 2 In May of 2013, Cory was just a few weeks shy of graduating from Cal State Northridge with a degree in psychology. One night after work...

15:54 Speaker 6 I brought the bottle of tequila home and I just started drinking it and watching a movie, and I blacked out 'cause I'm a blackout drinker. I don't remember anything other than starting to drink and waking up handcuffed to a hospital bed.

16:07 Speaker 2 He was informed in the hospital about the crimes he had committed. He had stolen the firearm of a family member and taken a walk to a local apartment complex.

16:18 Speaker 6 And I ended up knocking on a strange person's door who I'd never met. And here's somebody knocking on her door in the, 5:00 in the morning, carrying a .357 Magnum. So she called the police, and four officers arrived with guns drawn. "LAPD, drop your weapon." I refused to comply with their orders, and instead I turned around and I opened fire on them. So they opened fire. They fired six rounds. Five of those rounds missed, but one of them hit me square in the center of the chest, went through the top of the left lung and came out the shoulder. I mean, any more of those bullets hit me, I'd be dead.

17:01 Speaker 2 In early 2015, Cory pleaded guilty to assault with a firearm on a peace officer. His plea deal landed him 10 years in California State Prison. Cory began sober living treatment shortly after his arrest, so by the time he was assigned to Soledad State Prison in 2015, he was well-versed in 12-step and other self-help philosophies. But he was still struggling with his perspective.

17:32 Speaker 6 And there was a time where I felt like I was a victim. You know? Like, they're lying about everything. I didn't shoot at them. They shot at me.

17:45 Speaker 2 At Soledad, Cory met Yochanan Friedman. Through Friedman, Cory was on the kosher food program, attended Jewish services, studied Torah, and wrapped tefillin. He began to teach Jewish inmates how to read and write Hebrew, and he was working for AA, sponsoring and supporting other recovering alcoholics.

18:05 Speaker 3 He, he's, I mean, if you can imagine a Jewish college geek with a pocket liner for his pencils, you know? That's who he is. He so did not belong there

18:14 Speaker 2 But there was still something missing for Corey, something that hadn't been addressed. Sometime around 2018, Rabbi Friedman approached him to discuss Choices for Life.

18:25 Speaker 6 And I really liked what I was hearing. And the main things that I learned were you can exist means you can take up space, or you can live, which means you can be useful, you can be helpful. I learned purpose versus pleasure. I learned living versus existence. Those were things that I had some idea of from what I was doing in AA, but I learned so much about myself. I learned so much about how to be helpful in Choices for Life.

19:04 Speaker 2 Corey began to apply these new concepts to his life in prison.

19:08 Speaker 3 So he, he just kept finding ways of being more necessary and more helpful and doing more for others, which is the underlying theme of Choices for Life. So he was, he was the perfect student and then facilitator for Choices for Life, and he helped a lot of people, and he helped get Choices for Life from a fledgling little project into what it is now.

19:29 Speaker 2 Corey was released in October of 2021, a couple of years earlier than he'd expected.

19:35 Speaker 6 I'm just not the same person I was going in.

19:39 Speaker 2 He's now a store manager for a multi-billion dollar corporation.

19:43 Speaker 6 I gained that trust by continuing to practice these positive principles, by continuing to be useful, by continuing to try to help others, by continuing to go above and beyond. I learned these things from the rabbi. I learned these things from Choices for Life.

20:02 Speaker 2 Corey's still actively involved in AA, and he often shares his experiences to prisoners in the California system.

20:09 Speaker 6 My story needs to be used for good things. My story needs to be used to provide hope to others.

20:17 Speaker 2 Corey stays in touch with Yochanan Friedman, same with Jonathan Barber, who was released in 2019 after a 16-year term. Remember that his sentence could have kept him in prison for life. He thinks that the lessons he learned through Choices for Life helped rid him of his perceived victimhood, which convinced the parole board that he'd do well on the outside.

20:40 Speaker 5 Because I had to swallow huge, huge humility pills. If I didn't have the background with, like, Choices for Life, I could have easily doubled down and revisited that victim experience.

20:52 Speaker 2 In fact, Jonathan's as passionate about helping people on the outside as he was about helping people on the inside. He's been a drug counselor, transition house program director, and he's opened and operated residential treatment programs in California and other states. He recently earned a master's degree in social work from USC and plans to open an independent practice.

21:15 Speaker 5 I love it. Being helpful for people who are looking for help is beautiful.

21:21 Speaker 2 Like Corey, Jonathan makes it to the occasional Choices for Life graduation ceremony. Manes Friedman does as well. At a recent one, he heard a graduate share something poignant.

21:32 Speaker 1 When I call my family, they want to talk to me. My children respect me. And everyone in the room went, "Oh, God. You can get that back?" Everybody was moved to tears.

21:52 Speaker 2 Rabbi Yochanan Friedman estimates Choices for Life has graduated about 700 inmates.

21:58 Speaker 3 The administration at CTF, they see the, the effect. The warden, the chief deputy, they see a lot of the changes in these guys, so they like these programs.

22:06 Speaker 2 The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation awarded a grant to start Choices for Life. Now, Friedman is hoping for support from major donors and foundations to help spread it far and wide in partnership with Aleph Institute. A new Choices for Life textbook was just published, which will be available to prison chaplains in California and beyond. And there's a documentary in the works about the program. Friedman is looking beyond prisons into high schools and online so the program can be available to everybody.

22:41 Speaker 3 This is a very fundamental concept that everybody can use. As far as it can go, with Hashem's help, it'll do good things everywhere.

22:50 Speaker 2 That's a tall task for an organization with only four current staffers. But Friedman is confident that the core principles, as transmitted through the Rebbe and his father, are too important not to make available to the whole world. Corey and Jonathan agree.

23:07 Speaker 5 We're here on Earth for a very finite portion of time. When folks are on their deathbed, they're not looking for any of those superficial things. Folks are looking for the comfort of their loved ones around them. And the best way to thrive in life is to be focused on how I can support the ones around me.

23:29 Speaker 6 If more people thought that way, then I think the world would just be a much, much happier place.

23:38 Speaker 2 Back in S Cruz, the Friedmans are busy as ever supporting the Jewish community, surfers, doctors, tourists, and locals. Bailie Friedman focuses on that with the help of their oldest daughter, Mushka Geisinsky, and her husband, Menachem, who've been in S Cruz for about six years to help with youth and holiday programs. Bailie has noted a big difference in her husband since he's dedicated more of his time to Choices for Life.

24:06 Speaker 4 He doesn't go there with this dread. He comes home so much happier. It's a really good program.

24:14 Speaker 3 It really blows my mind every time I teach it, experience it, and talk about it. The Rebbe has a plan. Hashem has a plan. You let it happen the way it's supposed to and try not to get in the way, and everything works out just fine.

24:26 Speaker 1 So the idea that nothing stands in the way of teshuvah, no one is beyond redemption, that's pretty powerful.

24:44 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.