JTA reports that Lawrence Seth Wayne fled Florida more than a decade ago after having been sentenced to 19 years in prison for manslaughter while driving drunk.
A heinous crime.
And an unkosher response. You see, Wayne fled Florida for Israel on a forged passport and evaded justice. Now, Wayne has convinced an Israeli judge to turn down Florida’s extradition request because Florida will not guarantee Wayne a kosher diet in prison.
It is unclear whether Wayne is religious and eats only kosher food. He married and had children in Israel, and has been wearing a knitted yarmulke since being discovered by the FBI in Israel a year ago.
Add to Wayne’s crime of killing while drunk the crime of “hillul Hashem,” desecration of the Divine name, that is, of the good name of the Jewish people.
Wayne convinced Israel’s Judge Ben-Tzion Greenberger that sending him back to Florida would violate Israel’s extradition law, which forbids extradition to a foreign country if it could “harm public policy or a crucial interest of the State of Israel.”
We would argue that not sending Wayne back could harm a crucial interest of Israel, namely, Israel’s reputation as a refuge for persecuted Jews, not for convicted criminals, not for those who exploit Israel’s Law of Return for nefarious purposes.
American prisons should provide kosher food. Kashrut is a religious practice that a person does not forfeit by virtue of committing a crime, even a heinous one. But the burden of seeking to change the policy of a state that does not provide kosher food should fall on Wayne, not on Judge Greenberger, who ruled that he would approve Wayne’s extradition request if Florida would provide Wayne with kosher food or if Wayne could serve out his sentence in a state that does provide kosher food.
Criminals who compound their crime by fleeing justice and then by blackening the name of Israel and of the Jewish religion do not deserve the special treatment Greenberger extends to Wayne.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
