Metro

Young rabbis visit detention center to lead Rosh Hashanah services

Their mothers must love this.

Two intrepid young rabbis are going “up the river” for the High Holidays — to a federal lockup in Brooklyn, where they will lead Rosh Hashana services for Jewish convicts.

Hasidic Rabbis Yoel Pesso and Chezky Weiss, both 23, are turning the chapel at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park into a temporary shul this week so that some 30 inmates can atone for their sins.

“Everyone deserves to have a connection with God,” said Pesso, who is a Crown Heights-based Lubavitch Hasid, along with Weiss. “Even if you commit a crime, it doesn’t sever the connection.”

The detention center houses about 1,000 inmates, about 60 of whom are Jewish, according to the Aleph Institute, a Miami-based organization that provides services to Jewish inmates at 30 prisons.

Rituals will include the blowing of the shofar — a ram’s horn — and a reading of the Torah portion in which Abraham is ordered to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

“God tested Abraham, which is analogous to what’s happening on Rosh Hashana; throughout the year, people are tested . . . and sometimes they’ll give in to [temptations],” Weiss said.