Tag: Zater

  • Heritage of Spirit

    “Most people are standing, here, with one foot in the past and one in the future,” Zater says, drawing a man on a lined notebook sheet, “But they’re looking and leaning back, like there’s a mattress against the wall in the past, and they fall into it and it bounces them forward, but they just…

  • Heritage of Spirit

    “Most people are standing, here, with one foot in the past and one in the future,” Zater says, drawing a man on a lined notebook sheet, “But they’re looking and leaning back, like there’s a mattress against the wall in the past, and they fall into it and it bounces them forward, but they just…

  • Chanukah in Prison

    In prison, seeing a flame is rare. Tonight, dozens of them adorned folding tables near the glass front doors of the chapel, colorful wax candles stuck in ubiquitous tin Chanukah Menorahs, lit by Jewish men from Israel, Germany, Latin America, the United States, and Florida. Some men sat and stared at the fire for a…

  • In the Image of the Creator

    I have been thinking a lot about hunger lately, because I’m often hungry here. The kosher meals, cheap TV dinners full of soy, sodium, and fillers, are calorie-short, even if you could eat all of them. They are frequently moldy or full of melted or broken bits of plastic. I kept a log for a…

  • Teaching Art in Prison

    Last night, I taught a drawing class to a room full of men accused of crimes ranging from armed bank robbery, to child porn, to drug running, to white-collar fraud, to illegal migration, to public corruption… The Education building of FCI Miami Low looks like a small school, but with the same heavy steel doors…

  • The Lebanese Jewish Zen Monk Who Taught Nazis to Fight

    The Lebanese Jewish Zen Monk Who Taught Nazis to Fight

    “Nobody with hope joins a gang,” says Brian Zater, the Lebanese Jewish Zen Monk of Glass House. He’s telling me about his first encounter with a White Nationalist, “He was covered from the neck down in tattoos, with plenty of swastikas.” Brian Jones approached Zater, the new guy in the Pen, in a TV room…