{"id":12837,"date":"2009-08-19T13:31:57","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T13:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/production.ou.org\/life\/other\/from_jail_to_judaism\/"},"modified":"2015-11-01T07:55:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T12:55:47","slug":"from_jail_to_judaism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/from_jail_to_judaism\/","title":{"rendered":"From Jail to Judaism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Louis Ferrante\u2019s Journey From the Mob to the Mesorah<\/i><\/p>\n

Many of us arrive at moments in our lives where circumstances oblige us to reinvent ourselves: the loss of a job, an empty nest, a family emergency. But there are very few of us who have reinvented ourselves as completely and profoundly as former Mafia star Louis Ferrante–and even fewer who have accomplished it with as much grit and determination.<\/p>\n

In America, everybody loves a rags-to-riches story, one that chronicles the struggles of an immigrant or a log cabin-born orphan to beat the odds and become wealthy or powerful. But in the case of Mr. Ferrante\u2019s personal evolution, the meaning of \u201crags to riches\u201d takes on a new meaning. His young adulthood was spent moving up the fast track in the Mafia hierarchy, walking around with huge wads of cash in his pockets and heading up sizable teams who worked under him. On a spiritual level, however, these ill-acquired gains could not be considered riches at all. On the contrary, they were dirty \u201crags\u201d that he ultimately rejected, as he made a conscious choice while serving time in federal prison to pursue instead the intellectual and spiritual \u201criches\u201d that were to be found in literature, Judaism, and, ultimately, the depths of his own soul.<\/p>\n

Now in his thirties, Louis Ferrante lives in a large house on eight acres in the Catskills (\u201cmy mortgage costs less than what I was paying for a little hole in Long Island,\u201d he jokes with a New Yorker\u2019s irony). He has become a successful writer with book tours in the U.S. and Europe, today making an honest living with his hard-won literary skills. The intonations of his speech betray his Italian-American, Queens-born-and-bred origins; when he opens his mouth, one imagines a truck driver who works for NPR. Aware that he is speaking to a frum<\/i> lady from Brooklyn who may be possessed of more delicate sensibilities, he minds his manners and apologizes in gentlemanly fashion on the rare occasion a four-letter word slips out.<\/p>\n

By the time he was twenty one, Louis Ferrante had become a \u201csuccessful\u201d businessman, if \u201cbusiness\u201d can be broadly taken to mean organizing truck hijackings and \u201csuccess\u201d means being able to fence the loot. It was fast money for a young man still taken with a world of fast cars and fast women. Spending all his time on the street, running with Italian cronies, he learned to negotiate the Mob\u2019s \u201csystem,\u201d and was eventually singled out for notice by the Gambino\/Gotti clan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to spend a lot of time at the home of one of the Gottis,\u201d Ferrante recalls. \u201cTheir son was a good friend of mine, and I was on the way up with six to twelve guys under me.\u201d Aside from the dubious pleasures and privileges of being a ben bayit<\/i> in the Gotti manor, the Mob\u2019s codes of honor and machismo appealed to an ambitious young man looking to make his mark. In the memoir of his transformation, Unlocked: From Prison to Proust<\/i>, Ferrante observes: \u201cThe streets, the whole Mob thing, gave us a sense of honor and camaraderie we needed. An eighteen-year-old in the Midwest, searching for these same feelings, might join the army or marines. In our neighborhood, we threw in with the Mafia.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those famous Mafia codes of honor had begun to show themselves shot as full of holes as a mobster caught in a turf war. Betrayed by a Mob informer in the 1990\u2019s, Ferrante found himself slapped with federal charges of credit card fraud and theft that threatened to put him behind bars for life. He was shuttled from the nightmarish Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to a maximum-security prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and finally, based on good behavior, to a medium-security prison in Otisville and another in the Adirondacks. Each prison was its own individual hell with its own bizarre rules, contradictions and codes of behavior, and it took all of Ferrante\u2019s street smarts to emerge relatively intact both physically and emotionally. What saved his sanity\u2014and ultimately prepared him to succeed in life beyond the prison walls\u2014was his discovery first of the life of the mind, through books, and then ultimately the life of the soul, through Judaism.<\/p>\n

THE MAKING OF A MOBSTER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How does an otherwise nice Italian-American kid get started on a life of crime? Ferrante grew up in Flushing, in a rough neighborhood near the projects. \u201cMy father still lives there,\u201d he told me. \u201cAt this point I think he\u2019s the only non-Asian on the block. But in my day it was Italian, Irish, Jewish, black\u2014and everybody<\/i> was tough.\u201d His parents sent him to Catholic school, where, he jokes, \u201cthe nuns were worse than the prison guards, and as for the priests, I\u2019m still waiting to see their names pop up in the newspapers one day!\u201d He finished high school, just barely, because he had promised his mother he would. But he had already started a career in theft, everything from truckloads of cheap underwear to travelers\u2019 checks.<\/p>\n

His mother, who seems to have represented all that is good and true in life to Ferrante, was diagnosed with a cancer that culminated in a long, painful death when he was twenty. \u201cI took care of her till the end, and she died in my arms,\u201d Ferrante says with great sadness. \u201cAt that point I think I lost any faith in G-d I might have had. Why had He taken my mother, who was so good? I had enough brains to ask the questions, but not enough brains to answer them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was little to stand in the way of an embittered young man continuing to dig himself deeper into a life devoid of any moral compass. Ferrante describes a life of sleeping until noon, hanging out in restaurants and pool halls, and plotting the next heist. He hung out with buddies whose colorful names sound like a parody of television Mafia characters: Funzi, Tony the Pork Chop, Botz, Tony Twitch, Barry the Brokester. Ferrante and his underlings never killed anybody, but when he and his minions would hijack trucks, they would bind the driver with duct tape, shove a pistol in his mouth to show him they meant business, and dump him on the side of the road a few miles down the road.<\/p>\n

But there were certain contradictory moments of altruism amidst the violence and the thievery, certain glimpses that Ferrante had the potential to one day turn his heart to the good. For example, he narrowly missed going to jail for beating up a thug in a bar who was bullying an old, defenseless man; on another occasion, while driving a stolen car, he saw a young tough slash at an elderly woman and steal her purse. Outraged, he left the car in traffic, overtook the kid and recovered the purse.<\/p>\n

And when the Feds came to bust him in 1994, there were also indications that, beneath the bravado and the thrills of pulling off impressive heists, Ferrante had a well-buried but nevertheless far from defunct sense of morality. \u201cI was subpoenaed by the FBI and asked to cooperate,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of mobsters, once they\u2019re arrested, suddenly \u2018see the light\u2019 and begin to sing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he himself still respected the rapidly-becoming-archaic Mafia code of silence. \u201cI felt it was beneath my dignity to give in, and I had a sense of conscience not to betray people,\u201d he states. \u201cMy pride said I should just take my licks for what I had done, and the truth is that underneath, I really knew I deserved to be punished.\u201d<\/p>\n

LIFE BEHIND BARS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ferrante was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center for three years while his verdict dragged on. There were no outdoor recreation facilities, no windows, no night or day or privacy; the skin on his face began peeling from a lack of sunlight. The inmates passed the time gambling and abusing each other. The cells crawled with roaches and rats, and stunk of excrement and misery.<\/p>\n

Finally he was sentenced to a maximum security prison in Lewisburg, PA. \u201cThat was a zoo<\/i>,\u201d Ferrante says. \u201cThe first day I got there, the alarms went off\u2014a race war had started after some members of the Aryan Nation hacked two Black Muslims to death. Somebody handed me a machete and told me how to defend myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferrante\u2019s account of prison life, especially in maximum security, shocks in its account of brutality, injustice, and abuse; the sub-human conditions of the prison reduced these already-violence-prone people into little more than animals, stealing from each other, beating each other up and worse. \u201cYou sit at the dinner table with murderers,\u201d Ferrante recounts, \u201cwho would easily kill you for your dessert or for cutting ahead in the chow line.\u201d (When he was finally upgraded to a medium-security prison, he marveled that the prisoners were actually allowed to eat with plastic knives.) It was a world where one could only survive by being considered dangerous, and where kindness was interpreted as weakness. Ferrante remarks wryly, \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to feel sorry for hungry wolves when they\u2019re gnawing at your flesh.\u201d<\/p>\n

In prison, all sense of time slipped away as one day melted into the next; all sense of initiative was stripped by the boredom and imposed routine of prison life. Trivial issues like what was served for supper took on inflated importance. Inmates sorted themselves into cliques: the blacks, the Hispanics, the Italians, the white supremacists. The guards could be every bit as brutal as the inmates; Ferrante describes one incident where guards literally beat a man to a pulp, high on \u201cviolence without accountability\u201d\u2014after all, who would believe the complaints of a bunch of convicts?<\/p>\n

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE WORD<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

One day, while Ferrante was at the Metropolitan Detention Center, one of the wardens refused to let the inmates on his block see the relatives who had come to visit them. Visiting day was a long-awaited event for the convicts, and they were furious. That night, an aging Sicilian Mafiosi threw an apple at the guard, setting off a fury of banging and throwing of objects at him. The guard hit the ground and radioed for reinforcements.<\/p>\n

Ferrante, the youngest man in the block, was accused of throwing the apple and starting the conflagration. Refusing to implicate his cellmate, he was stripped and sent into solitary confinement. They starved him for two days, at the end of which the captain came to visit. Ferrante asked for a mattress, and the captain laughed at him. Furious, Ferrante grabbed the captain\u2019s tie to strangle him\u2014but it came off in his hand, it was only a clip-on! \u201cDo you think we\u2019d wear real ties with you %@$# animals?\u201d the captain jeered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat somehow really shook me,\u201d Ferrante told me. \u201cAnd something clicked in my mind\u2014today, I think the only explanation is the grace of G-d. I began thinking: am I really<\/i> no more than an animal? Why am I this way? Do I have any purpose in this world? I realized I had a million questions and no answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferrante now had two months of solitary in which to contemplate his million questions. By the time he was put back in his regular cell, he already felt himself pulling away psychologically from his Mafia friends\u2014an unusual move, since Mafiosi types normally only distance themselves from the Mob when they rat on each other. But now he was tired of endless card games and cigarettes, tired of the same old pointless banter and reminiscing, and felt possessed of a strange new hunger to find some answers to his questions\u2014in books.<\/p>\n

He picked up the phone and called the only friend he could think of who ever read. \u201cIn my home there were never any books,\u201d he says. \u201cI never read in high school, just cheated through my exams.\u201d His friend went to a bookstore and told the clerk he needed books for a friend who was \u201cshort and bossy.\u201d The clerk picked out a biography of Napoleon, Caesar\u2019s Gallic Wars<\/i>, and Mein Kampf<\/i>.<\/p>\n

With deadpan humor, Ferrante recounts that the books arrived just as a brutal murderer was telling all the inmates how he and a friend had killed the third party in a love triangle and hacked him into pieces… although they didn\u2019t cut off the head: \u201cUgh! That would be disgusting!\u201d said the killer, oblivious to his own absurd lack of logic. \u201cMy books couldn\u2019t have come at a better time,\u201d Ferrante thought to himself as he beat a hasty retreat into a corner with his new acquisitions.<\/p>\n

He labored through all of them; he bought a dictionary from another inmate \u201cfor a stamp\u201d and had to look up half the words on each page (except those beginning with Y and Z, since those pages were ripped out of the dictionary). He understood little, and comments dryly in his book, \u201cHitler used a lot of big words. I knew he was full of it because my lawyers used big words, and they were also full of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Ferrante recognizes that \u201cHashem really helped me. When I made the effort, it was like the manna would come down. For instance, when I finished reading War and Peace<\/i>, I was just blown away. I couldn\u2019t wait to read more Tolstoy. The next day, I found a copy of Anna Karenina<\/i> in a broken urinal.\u201d<\/p>\n

His friend sent more books, and he learned the prison had a library. Reading was becoming an obsession; he sometimes read for eighteen hours a day. He no longer slept much, because he no longer needed sleep as an escape, he had found something better; he would stuff his ears with tissues to keep the roaches from crawling in and read until he nodded off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could tune into things really well, because there\u2019s nothing else going on in prison,\u201d Ferrante recalls. \u201cToday I can\u2019t do that any more, only on Shabbos. I\u2019ve read that the brain works best under moderate stress, and that was what I was living with in prison; in a funny way, those circumstances helped open my mind.\u201d Before long, he was not only reading, but putting his thoughts onto paper as well. When his papers were confiscated during a prison shakedown, he began mailing chapters to his father, initiating a relationship they hadn\u2019t had in years. He even organized classes within the prison<\/p>\n

His first stirrings of conscience, perhaps his first true steps towards reform and teshuva<\/i>, were aroused by a book. He had taken out a copy of Martin Gilbert\u2019s Churchill<\/i> from the prison library and liked it so much he thought he might just keep it, ripping out the card pocket in the back. But then, suddenly, he just didn\u2019t want to do the wrong thing. He stuffed the back page back in and returned it to the librarian. \u201cFor the first time, I actually realized that stealing is wrong,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

When Ferrante was transferred to Otisville, a medium-security prison, he befriended fellow inmate Richard Messina, a corporate attorney. Messina loved books, loved language, and he became Ferrante\u2019s language coach, expanding his vocabulary and correcting his pronunciation. Ferrante eventually became educated enough to overturn an illegal verdict first for a semi-retarded inmate who had been given a bum rap (a victory that gave Ferrante tremendous nachas) and later overturn charges for himself, winning an early release after \u201conly\u201d eight years.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrison is designed to break the individual,\u201d he eventually wrote. \u201cIt outright destroyed me, the old me. I was building someone better.\u201d<\/p>\n

FROM BOOKS TO THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

There was no shortage of religion in prison, Ferrante says. \u201cI\u2019d say ninety percent of the guys in prison get religion at some point,\u201d he claims. \u201cThey become born-agains or Muslims. But it wasn\u2019t real; if their parole didn\u2019t come through, or something happened, they\u2019d chuck the whole thing in an instant. I figured, if they\u2019re going that<\/i> way, I\u2019m going the other way!\u201d<\/p>\n

He had many theological questions simmering in his mind, and in order to find answers began to read everything from the Gospels to the Koran to Confucius to Torah. \u201cIn the end, it all came down to one thing: there is one G-d,\u201d he says. \u201cAll the other religions just seemed to be Johnny-come-latelies, copying the Torah.\u201d And he had no use for religions with multiple deities and scores of saints: \u201cEven on the street, I went straight to the Boss!\u201d he jokes. He began reading about the Jewish people, the first to receive the Bible\u2014\u201ccould G-d have picked the wrong horse?\u201d he asked. \u201c–Not very likely!\u201d<\/p>\n

He approached the prison rabbi and told him he wanted to learn more about Judaism. \u201cHe didn\u2019t take me seriously, thought I just wanted to get extra treats or something,\u201d Ferrante recounts. \u201cSo I told him, \u2018I\u2019m not interested<\/i> in your bagels and rugelach! I want conversation<\/i>!\u2019\u201d Finally recognizing his sincerity, the rabbi obliged.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I was in Otisville [the medium-security prison], there were Jews,\u201d Ferrante says. \u201dSome American, some European, a few Israelis, even a few Chasids. Some of them had background, put on tefillin. They would make a minyan. By 1998 I was keeping Shabbos, eating kosher and praying daily with an Artscroll siddur.\u201d He asked an old friend to send kosher food, and was surprised to open a package filled with Italian pepperoni and sopressata as well as pickled herring and gefilte fish\u2014it turned out that his friend had gone to the store and asked the clerk to give him food for a friend who was \u201chalfa guinea, halfa Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI even wrote a commentary on the Chumash, with the encouragement of the rabbi at the last prison in the Adirondacks,\u201d he says. \u201cIt took me two years, my last two years in prison. I couldn\u2019t do it now; I have too little time and too many distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he read more about Jewish history, he felt himself strengthened by the examples of Jewish martyrs. When the prison guards tormented and degraded him, he would think of those who went through concentration camps, those who had never committed any crimes at all to deserve such brutality. He developed new mental reflexes in the face of prison degradation, a new ability to tell himself, \u201cThey can harm my body, but they can never have my mind<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without even having converted yet, he managed to make a kiddush Hashem<\/i>. This occurred when he was transported from one prison to another with a guy named Slim, the child of junkies who grew up in brutal, abusive foster homes. Slim had no one on the outside to send him money, and when they stopped at a commissary Ferrante took pity on him and bought him some toiletries and ten-cent soups. A few days later, Slim saw Ferrante reading a Chumash on his bunk, wearing a yarmulke. \u201cYou\u2019re a Jew?\u201d he asked incredulously. \u201cYeah,\u201d Ferrante replied, \u201cI\u2019m an Italian Jew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slim looked perturbed, and shortly afterwards Ferrante found out he was an Aryan Nation leader\u2014and shrewdly decided to keep his distance. Finally, a few weeks later, Slim slunk over to his bunk and made him the gift of a few music tapes someone had left behind. \u201cMy brother\u2019s an Aryan too,\u201d he told Ferrante. \u201cI wrote him a letter, told him the only guy who ever helped me in my life is a Jew.\u201d He showed Ferrante the swastika tattooed on his chest and said, \u201cThe ink guy is coming next week, and I\u2019m having him cover this up.\u201d Ferrante comments: \u201cThe power of a good deed. . . a ten-cent soup can change someone\u2019s opinion of an entire race.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time he was released from prison, Ferrante\u2019s father had remarried with, of all things, a Jewish woman from Long Island. Through his new stepmother, Ferrante met a Conservative rabbi, Arthur Rulnick. Rulnick and Ferrante hit it off and spent hours upon hours in conversation together. \u201cI adore him,\u201d Ferrante says. Rulnick\u2019s adult children, according to Ferrante, have all become frum<\/i> and are also close friends.<\/p>\n

Because of his attachment to Rulnick, Ferrante chose to go through conversion procedures with him at his Conservative synagogue, selecting the name Moshe ben Avraham. \u201cMoshe was always my hero,\u201d he told me, \u201cthe one who received the Torah directly from Hashem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, anyone coming from the Orthodox point of view does not accept such a conversion as complete. \u201cYou know,\u201d I feel compelled to explain gently to Ferrante, \u201cA Conservative conversion is not acceptable in all circles; in Israel, and in all Orthodox circles, only an Orthodox conversion has any legitimacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I know!\u201d he answers promptly. \u201cI\u2019m aware of that, and I plan to do an Orthodox conversion! As it is I would call my level of observance either ultra-Conservative or modern Orthodox. I dream of living in Israel one day, and eventually being buried there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, I have already called an Orthodox rabbi. You have to understand\u2014I want<\/i> to be more Jewish. And for me, believe me, it won\u2019t be hard after everything I\u2019ve been through to get so far!\u201d<\/p>\n

I must admit I find him convincing. In Pirke Avot, it says a person who keeps the Torah in poverty will keep it in wealth. Louis Ferrante began struggling to keep the Torah alone in a prison cell, with next to no support, and next to no reason to do it except that everything he read and understood whispered to him that this was the truth. If you can start davening and eating kosher and keeping Shabbos in prison, with rats and cockroaches as your only companions, chances are pretty good you\u2019ll be able to keep it when you get outside into a place with shuls and Jewish bookstores and rabbis to help out.<\/p>\n

When Ferrante completed his \u201cconversion\u201d with Arthur Rulnick, he decided he wished to purchase a pair of tefillin. Rulnick gave him the address of a bookstore in College Point, Queens. He drove over, got out of his car, and stopped dead in his tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized,\u201d he says, \u201cthat I was less than a block away from where I had hijacked a truck over a decade ago. The hijacking site and the Hebrew book store were in my same field of vision. Who would have thought I would have traveled so long and far to return to this same spot, a completely different person?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was blown away. . . I felt like G-d led me to this spot, to show me my entire journey in the space of a breath.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the point of view of an Orthodox person, Ferrante is still a work in progress. Living in his home in the Catskills, he is still far from a shul, and spends Shabbos on his own or with a friend. \u201cI got used to doing Shabbos on my own in prison,\u201d he shrugs when I suggest that Shabbos, and indeed all Jewish life, is really designed to be lived in a community setting. \u201cMaybe when I\u2019m married and have children, I\u2019ll need to be closer to a shul and to schools,\u201d he admits. \u201cFor now, this is good for writing.\u201d I tell him that a Jewish writer (Varda Branfman) once described the transition to Orthodox life as akin to \u201cinterplanetary travel,\u201d and while I am sure he understands this on the level of a person who transformed from a Mafia thug to a Conservative Jewish intellectual, I am not sure if he yet understands the sort of changes in values and attitudes that have yet to be made in the shift from Conservative to Orthodox; in many cases, the change is less a matter of just doing more<\/i> than of changing one\u2019s entire worldview.<\/p>\n

But if anybody can do it, Louis Ferrante can. With an Orthodox conversion in the works, a promising literary career now getting off the ground, and plans to one day move to Israel, Louis Ferrante\u2019s long journey may still have many, many miles left to go. And what a lovely thing that will be for him\u2014after all, we all know that travelers who accrue the most miles garner the most bonus points\u2014and a lovely thing for us as well, as we can only look forward to his future contributions to the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

\n

Barbara Bensoussan has worked as a college instructor and social worker and written for many Jewish magazines, newspapers and websites. She recently celebrated the release of her first novel, A New Song<\/i>, from Targum Press and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and six children.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louis Ferrante\u2019s Journey From the Mob to the Mesorah Many of us arrive at moments in our lives where circumstances oblige us to reinvent ourselves: the loss of a job, an empty nest, a family emergency. 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