"Bostoner Rebbe" was first American-born Chassidic leader

JERUSALEM - Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Horowitz, the first American-born Chassidic leader, died Saturday, Dec. 5.  He was 88 and never fully recovered from a heart attack suffered last summer.  He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Widely known as the "Bostoner Rebbe," Horowitz was born in Boston, the son of Rabbi Pinchos Dovid Horowitz, who founded the Chassidic dynasty that his son headed since 1944.
In 1943, Horowitz joined a group of 400 rabbis from around the country in a march to Washington D.C. organized by the Bergson Group and led by Hillel Kook and Rabbi Eliezer Silver.  The group was determined to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prevail upon him to rescue Jews from the Nazis. Roosevelt declined to meet with them and, as the group marched silently outside the White House, the President slipped out a side door. 
Over the years, Horowitz dedicated much of his efforts to reaching out to the Boston area's large number of college students to bring them closer to Judaism. 
"The rebbe was a real man of truth," Dovid Gottlieb told the Jerusalem Post.  Gottlieb, a former professor of philosophy at John Hopkins University who now teaches at Ohr Somayach Yeshiva in Jerusalem, was a student at Brandeis University when he embraced an Orthodox lifestyle under Horowitz's influence. "He saw right to your very soul and he could tell you what you should do in life. For instance, he told me to pursue my academic career. But he told others to learn in yeshiva. He told me once that being a rebbe meant that you were there when someone needed to make a big decision and needed spiritual guidance."
After establishing a second center for his Chassidic dynasty in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem in 1984, he began to split his time between Boston and Israel. In 1999, he established another center in Beitar Illit.
In 1995, Horowitz, who was a member of Agudat Yisrael's Council of Torah Sages and believed strongly in maintaining a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, came out in strong opposition to the Gaza disengagement and evacuation and visited the affected communities to show his support. 
Horowitz was the founder of the Rofeh International Organization, which provides the sick with referrals to medical specialists around the world and provides hospitality and kosher meals to patients in the Boston area.
Horowitz' first wife died in 2002.  He is survived by his second wife and five children.
<hr>