Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz won’t let the struggles of frum Jews in early America fall into oblivion.
(Photos: Shulim Goldring)
T he chassidic world is known for storiesso maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Horowitz the Bostoner Rebbe of Lawrence New York is a veritable fount of them. His full beard glasses and resonant well-enunciated voice lend him a professorial air as he spins out tale after tale one folding into the next. He clearly relishes these stories and recounts them with infectious enthusiasm.
As the oldest great-grandson of the original Bostoner Rebbe not to mention a ninth generation scion of the Baal Shem Tov . From an early age he absorbed the importance of preserving family and collective Jewish history.
But he hasn’t contented himself with chassidic stories alone. Through his travels as a kashrus director he has come across many tales of Jews in the early days of America who struggled to remain faithful to halachah even in the wilds of the American West. They were pioneers as Jews as well as Americans establishing the first Jewish institutions and doing their best to practice within the fold. These often-moving stories prompted Rabbi Horowitz to begin collecting information about the history of frum Yidden in America moving tales often neglected in an American Jewish history field dominated by non-observant Jews. Today he leads the American Jewish Legacy an organization he founded to pursue and disseminate his findings.
“Bostoner chassidus is the first American chassidus serving the Jewish community for over 100 years” Rabbi Horowitz declares sitting in the old-fashioned dining room in his apartment above the Bostoner shul in Lawrence NY. “My great-grandfather Rav Pinchas Dovid the first Bostoner Rebbe arrived in 1915 in the middle of World War I.”
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