Home › Blog › Every Soul Deserves to Be Seen: The Work of Neshama in the DMV
Rabbi Sholom Reindorp grew up in England in what he calls a “traditional” Jewish home; shomer kashrut (keeping kosher), synagogue on Shabbos mornings, and celebrating Jewish festivals throughout the year. It wasn’t until he became a shaliach, an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, that he discovered the population of Jews that almost no communal institution had thought to reach: the Jews in jails, detention centers, recovery programs, and group homes across Maryland and the greater Washington region. Jews who had marked “Jewish” on an intake form and had not spoken to another Jew in months. Jews who had chosen not to self-identify and flew completely under the radar. Jews whose families had lost contact with them during a lockdown and didn’t know if they were safe. Jews who had been living in this country for over a decade and found themselves, without warning, alone in a system they could not navigate.
In response, Rabbi Reindorp and his wife Mushki built Neshama. The nonprofit’s premise is simple: every person carries a neshama, a sacred soul. No circumstance, not incarceration, addiction, immigration status, or decades of distance from Jewish community, extinguishes that light or forfeits the right to have someone show up for it.
Here at the Jewish Community Foundation, our Philanthropic Impact team is constantly on the lookout for organizations addressing needs in our community that are severely under resourced. Support services for Jews incarcerated in our community was one of those areas. While public data suggests there are an estimated 10,000 Jews in the US prison system at any given time making up less than 1% of the prison population, Rabbi Reindorp believes this number to be significantly higher. State and Federal prison systems often don’t track Jewish identity as they consider it to be religion and not race or ethnicity leading to questions about the accuracy of the data reported. Beyond those incarcerated, there are thousands more in recovery programs, behavioral health units, and crisis housing across the country. In Greater Washington, those individuals had no organization or community whose specific job it was to support them throughout incarceration and after their rehabilitation process.
Until Neshama.
On a typical week, Rabbi Reindorp might drive to the Montgomery County Detention Center, where the facility has given him a list of residents who identified themselves as Jewish on their intake form. He arrives with tefillin, sometimes with holiday items, and most importantly, his time. He learns something about a person’s family, history, and relationship to their Judaism.
Then he might drive to Prince George’s County, or to a recovery program in DC, or to a group home where an elderly Jewish man hasn’t had a Jewish visitor in years. Or he might get a call—the kind that requires him to pull over and think quickly, because what is being described is not a pastoral situation but a logistical emergency.
Alan’s call was one of those.
Alan had been living in Rockville for over a decade. He was an Israeli who had built a life here, but had a problem with renewing his green card years earlier, leaving his immigration status technically unauthorized. Then, without warning, ICE came. By the time Neshama learned about it, Alan was in a holding facility in Baltimore, confused and frightened, facing a five-hour flight the next day to a detention center across the country.
Because he keeps a strictly kosher diet, he hadn’t eaten. No one at the facility understood what kosher actually required. Rabbi Reindorp moved immediately. He called ahead to explain kosher observance to the facility staff: sealed meals with reliable certification, no cross-contamination, separate utensils. By the time he arrived, the staff understood what they were being asked to accommodate. He assembled what Alan would need for his journey: factory-sealed certified-kosher meals, bread, fruit, snacks with clear kosher symbols, wrapped utensils.
At the facility, he cleared security, met with the officers coordinating the transfer, and found Alan. When Alan saw the food, Rabbi Reindorp later wrote, “the fear in his face softened into relief.” They spoke for a few minutes, in English and Hebrew, about what to expect during the transfer, and what would happen after. When it was time to go, Rabbi Reindorp walked with him as far as he was permitted.
Rabbi Reindorp reflected with us, “Those last moments mattered,” he wrote. “A familiar voice, a blessing for safety, and the reassurance that even in a system that can feel impersonal, his dignity and needs were seen.”
Alan boarded the plane with what he needed, physically and emotionally. Kavod ha-briot, the dignity of every person, did not pause for immigration proceedings.
And that’s because of Neshama.
Neshama works across Maryland in Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, the Baltimore area where he resides, and Washington DC. Rabbi Reindorp frequently visits the Montgomery County Detention Center, Prince George’s County facilities, and recovery and behavioral health programs across the District. He has met with Thomas Faust, Director of DC’s Department of Corrections, to advocate directly for better Jewish chaplaincy access and holiday programming for Jewish residents throughout the system. He runs Jewish awareness training for facility staff, because getting a call from a detention center director who has bought a new microwave to make food kosher for a Jewish inmate and needs it blessed is not outside the norm (Rabbi Reindorp had to explain that kashrus doesn’t quite work that way).
Neshama is a small, relationship-driven organization built almost entirely on the commitment of Rabbi and Mushki Reindorp and the trust they have built, visit by visit, across Greater Washington’s most overlooked facilities.
Gifts from your DAF can be directed to Neshama Care Inc. EIN: 84-3848897. To learn more or to speak with someone before giving, reach out to our team.