OITNB S3 E9 “Where My Dreidel At?” is about:

* Leanne’s backstory. She was an Amish girl who used her pre-baptism period out in the wider world to find drugs and the selling of drugs with some other Amish kids. When she returns for her baptism and embraces the church, the police arrest her (after finding her backpack full of the drugs she hid in a cornfield by magic?). In order to avoid doing prison time, Leanne agrees to entrap some of the other kids selling drugs. It all ends badly as she leaves the Amish community to spare her parents from the backlash from her decision (and somehow, as a result, ended up in prison - probably for drugs).

Leanne tries to take control of the “Norma” group as a way of ensuring that she can’t be expelled. When she decides to expel SoSo, she runs into opposition from Norma. The rapprochement between Leanne and SoSo fails miserably.

* Caputo and Danny fighting about lack of financial support and about the legality of MCC bringing a Rabbi in to certify “true Jews” (Sister Ingalls ends up to be the only “Jew” certified - even though she was a Catholic Nun). All of this is a result of inmates choosing Kosher meals which cost MCC more money than the slop they usually serve in the cafeteria.

Red registers her disgust with having to produce bad food.

Cindy decides to become a real-live Jewish convert after finding out she was not certified as Jewish (after her decision to convert, she says, “Where my Dreidel at?”).

* Sophia’s son Michael beats a kid up (we find out later that he beats the kid up for being “faggy”). Sophia assumes that this must be because of Gloria's son's influence, and tells Gloria that her family will no longer take Benny to Litchfield for visits, but she later finds out that he is acting out his frustration and confusion over his father’s journey. Rather than doing the right thing and apologizing to Gloria, she chooses to say nothing.

* Suzanne dealing with the problems of being a famous writer and starts to develop a closer relationship with one of her most ardent fans.

* Doggett and CO Donuts deepening their disturbing relationship.

* Vause continuing to grow increasingly paranoid about Lolly. By the end of the episode, Vause finds Lolly’s journal detailing all of her movements.

* Piper’s sad, and somewhat out of character, descent into cheating on Vause with Stella. Also, Piper becoming Litchfield's "panty mogul" (her plan to sell panties starts generating serious money).

The Zone of Exception

Danny mentions to Caputo that it turns out that there is some gray area between inmates constitutional rights and the ability of a private prison corporation to abrogate some (or all) of those rights.

When someone goes to jail or prison, some of the rights exist, others are suspended (perhaps never to return), and the net effect seems to mean that you live much of the rest of your life in a kind of constitutional zone of exception.

When you are in prison Michigan, the process through which you can exercise your rights becomes fairly complicated. Before you can petition a court for Due Process, you have to exhaust a fairly lengthy shadow legal process (in Michigan this is called the Grievance process).

So, say you believe that you have an actionable grievance against the Department of Corrections, to get relief for that grievance you have to go through a four (sometimes) five-stage process. Each of these stages requires a great deal of writing (often with legal requirements) and can take months to exhaust (sometimes years).

Just so you understand entirely, I was only in prison for three years but during that time I never saw even one complaint resolved during the time I was incarcerated. In every single situation and at every possible opportunity, the MDOC denies all grievances (in hopes, I suspect, that nobody will wait out the process to get to an actual court of law.