ACTIVIST SPOTLIGHT: HOWARD HOROWITZ

I grew up in Monticello, NY in the heart of the Borscht Belt. My grandfather was a Bundist who came to this country from Poland in 1918. Off the boat and passing through Ellis Island, he was recruited from a union hall in NYC to work for a butcher in the Catskills providing kosher meat to Borscht Belt hotels, bungalow colonies, summer camps, and “kuchaleyn.” He and my grandmother and various uncles and aunts are buried in the Workers Circle cemetery. 

My father, an engineer through the GI bill, married my mother who was from a religious household in Brooklyn. They raised five children in a middle-class household. Yiddishkeit meant religion imported from Brooklyn, and Yiddish was the language of both sets of grandparents, and the “secrets” language of my parents. אַזוי מיר אַלע רעדן אַ ביסל ייִדיש  (translation: as such I/we speak a “bissel,” a “little” Yiddish).

Fast forward to my coming of age at NYU in the Bronx, the civil rights movement, 1968, the Vietnam War, the draft, the teach-ins, and the student strikes. During that time, my uncle died and was buried in the Workers Circle Cemetery. In the context of my new understanding of the world and my desire to help change it, I finally learned from my family what it means to be a member of the Workers Circle as we sat Shiva.

Today, the Workers Circle and organizations like Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, HIAS, and Jewish Voice for Peace represent a celebration of Yiddishkeit in the Diaspora. They keep alive our traditional values in contrast to Zionism that does not celebrate and even denigrates more than a 1,000 years of Jewish history. To me, nationalism is antithetical to Yiddishkeit and antithetical to solidarity.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, welcome the stranger, solidarity in the struggle for racial and economic justice and against all forms of racism including anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinianism are the tenets that have called me to action. In addition to serving as Board Chair of Westchester People’s ActionCoalition (WESPAC) Foundation, I’m actively engaged with New York Caring Majority and the campaign for Fair Pay for Home Care legislation in NY State that would raise the pay to 150% of minimum wage for essential workers providing care to our elders, the sick or the disabled in their homes. Over 90% of NY’s home care workforce are women, nearly 80% are immigrants, and over 80% are people of color. Thus, this campaign, by and for workers, is about solidarity in the struggle for racial and economic justice and equity.