To STIR with Love-Tales from Prison-Leaving Personal Pain at the Barbed Wire Gates-Working our way through the Meron Tragedy-Suppressed Trauma can bleed into your professional life

Yeshiva of Newark Podcast

'This podcast is operated with the activity of Rabbi Kolakowski as a private

individual and not as a representative of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the

Department of Corrections, or any facility, bureau or office thereof. None of the

statements, representations, viewpoints, images or other media contained herein

has been sanctioned, approved or endorsed by the Commonwealth or the

Department. Nothing contained herein should be deemed to represent the official

views of the Commonwealth or the Department.'

Rabbi Yitzchak Kolakowski is the Facility Chaplaincy Program Director at the The State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Waymart, Pennsylvania. The institution is a medium security prison facility housing 1,100 inmates and a 120 bed Forensic Treatment Center, which provides inpatient psychiatric treatment in a secure setting for adult male offenders. Kolakowski is the first Rabbi in the history of the Commonwealth to serve as head chaplain in a state prison. Prior to his present position, he served pulpits and chaplaincy positions in Virginia and Upstate New York. The Rabbi has emerged as a talented speaker in areas of religion, politics, spirituality, popular culture, history, and interfaith affairs. He has created an extremely popular YouTube channel with thousands of followers. Kolakowski unashamedly recounts his personal history. While his mother was raised in a Modern Orthodox home in Queens, his father is a devout Roman Catholic. He had a bris in an Orthodox synagogue but was also baptized in a Catholic church. His maternal grandparents encouraged him to have a bar mitzvah in their Orthodox Shul which spurred the young Kolakowski to adopt a frum lifestyle. At eighteen, he spent a year in a Yeshiva in Yerushalayim, whose environs drew him into Hasidic practice and philosophy . Kolakowski went on to study for and receive semichah at Yeshiva Or Kedoshim Biala in Brooklyn. He recognized the need to obtain a B.A. in psychology from Lander College for Men .Hearing the call to become a communal leader, he matriculated to Touro College for a postgraduate certificate in Advanced Rabbinics and Synagogue Management in conjunction with the National Council of Young Israel and the Young Israel Council of Rabbis. Rabbi Kolakowski's English translation of sefer Seder HaYom by the late Biala Rebbe was published in 2006 in Israel to wide acclaim. He can be reached at [e-mail]

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