How One Jewish Inmate Found Faith Behind Bars

When Shawn Balva was 21 years old,  he was sentenced to eight years in prison for armed robbery. Just a few years earlier, he had been a promising high school football player in Las Vegas, with hopes of going pro. But a spiral of addiction and crime led him down a darker path. It was one that would land him in one of the most dangerous federal prisons in America.

Balva details his spiritual journey, which began in prison, in his book “Conviction” (Menucha Publishers). He wrote it by hand at the start of the pandemic, during a prison lockdown.

“There was an inmate who kept telling me, you have a very interesting story, you should write it down,” said Balva. “I had nothing better to do. I wrote it for like five days straight, every day all day. I was afraid that the guards might find it and take it, so I would email the pages to my mom and she kept it for me.”

In his book, Balva recounts how he ended up in prison and how he found faith and God behind prison walls. “I was raised in a secular home. We didn’t keep kosher, didn’t go to synagogue. However, when I first started my sentence, I was thinking to myself, I need to change my life, I don’t want to be a criminal. I thought to myself, what is the one positive thing that can help me get back on track? And in my head, it was Judaism.”

It wasn’t until he was transferred from Pahrump, Nevada, to Victorville, California, that he began to truly embrace Judaism, and it was an unlikely person who set him on that path. “I saw there a Black guy — he wasn’t Jewish — but when I met him, he was wearing a tallit and praying on Shabbat. He used to be a gang member and was sentenced to 56 years,” said Balva. “He inspired me to become religious. He was telling me, you need to start putting tefillin on every day, you need to keep kosher and pray, and I listened to him.”

Balva, 30, was born in Englewood, New Jersey, to an Israeli father and a Russian-Jewish mother. His family moved to Las Vegas when he was five years old. His future looked promising; he dreamed of going to college and playing professionally. But when he was 16 he started using drugs, and from there, his life spiraled out of control.

“Eventually, I started selling drugs and became a full-time criminal,” he said. “I got kicked off the football team at 17 and then dropped out of school. My mother did everything she could, talked to coaches, to rabbis, begged me to stop, but nothing helped. When your soul is into drugs and into criminal life, it’s like you’re in a cult. The only thing that could have saved me at that point is God.”

After he was sentenced, his parents were deeply worried for his safety. “It was a very dark and scary time — for me, but especially for my parents. When you send your 21-year-old son to prison, you don’t know what’s going on there. They were afraid to get a call that their son is hurt.”

Balva describes his time at Victorville penitentiary as extremely tough. “They call it Victim-Ville,” he said. Upon arrival, he immediately learned the inmate codes and the price for disobeying them. “One day they staged a walkout against the cops for turning off their TVs. I was the only inmate who didn’t walk out. So I was punished by them. I was ordered to lift my hands up and for 23 seconds two guys hit me in the stomach.”

Reporting the incident, he said, would have led to even worse consequences, as snitches are not tolerated in prison. So he kept quiet. Those who repeatedly disobeyed the inmate code were sent to the hospital after brutal beatings. “The inmates pretty much run the prison. If they want to do drugs or get tattoos, they just wait for the cop to go and they have a watch-out,” he said.

His one source of comfort was his faith. He tried to learn about Judaism however he could and, for the first time in his life, he fasted on Yom Kippur. At the end of the fast, he sat down for a “break-fast” — a plate of pork and cheese. “There was this guy there, kind of a Nazi, and he came to me and said, ‘I don’t get you Jews. On the one hand, you are keeping your traditions and holidays, and then, you’re not even keeping kosher.’”

That remark struck Balva hard. He never thought about it that way. He realized then how much he wanted to learn and educate himself. The problem was that there wasn’t a rabbi he could study with, nor were there other religious Jews in the prison.

His mother told him about Otisville prison in New York where there were about 20 Jewish inmates, daily minyans, and proper Shabbat and holiday observance. He requested a transfer, which was granted on religious grounds. “It was like going to a yeshiva,” he said. “I learned with the help of other inmates Gemara, Hebrew, Aramaic and Torah. I prayed a lot to God and applied everything I was learning. I felt like I was exactly where I wanted to be.”

His mother also underwent a spiritual transformation. “When I first got arrested, my mom was so nervous because I was facing 20 to 40 years in prison. She started lighting the candles, doing Kiddush, and praying for me,” he said. “She still does it to this day.”

Thanks to good behavior, Balva was released in 2022 after serving five years and 10 months. He was given five years of probation, which means he can’t leave Las Vegas for another two-and-a-half years, though he hopes to get an approval to move to Florida.

Balva is currently working on his second book, which delves deeper into his spiritual journey. “Conviction” sold out its first printing. He also gives lectures in schools and synagogues, telling his story. “I want to inspire youth and tell them how quickly things can go bad,” he said. “When I was young, I didn’t want to listen to anybody. I can connect with them because I’ve been there and can speak from my own experience.”