PHOTO BY JULIE EDGAR

The

men
Con
VW) re
annullies

A high holiday
was celebrated on the Hill.
Hil

Larry
Horwitz:
Congressional
assistant and
shammes.

JULIE EDGAR STAFF WRITER

e believes the year was
1965. A Congress buzzing
with fresh-faced Democ-
rats grappled with legis-
lation that would have a
profound impact on soci-
ety: voting rights,
Medicare, minimum wage,
and the war in Vietnam.
Herbert Tenzer was
among the newly elected
who helped President
Lyndon B. Johnson shep-
herd in his Great Society
programs that aimed to reverse
decades of poverty and abolish seg-
regation.
Mr. Tenzer, who died in 1993, for
two terms represented a district out-
side New York City. He was 59 years
old, the retired chairman of Barton
Candies, and one of 15 Jews in the
House of Representatives. Two Jews
served in the United States Senate —
Democrat Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut
and Republican Jacob Javits of New
York.
In 1965, Larry Horwitz was a 24-
year-old "political junkie" who joined
the staff of freshman Congressman
John Conyers Jr. of Detroit. As some-
thing of a veteran — he had been in
Washington for three years, working
as a legislative and administrative as-
sistant to a senator and two con-
gressmen — he helped newcomers
learn their way around Capitol Hill,
including Mr. Tenzer's staff across the
hall.
He had seen quite a bit outside of
Washington, too. Mr. Horwitz, a
Southfield resident and executive vice
president of the Economic Alliance for
Michigan, had left his hometown of
Los Angeles to study political science

at Harvard University. He interned
in Washington while he was a stu-
dent, but school went by the wayside.
His heart was in the swelling grass-
roots civil-rights movement, not acad-
emia.
In the spring of 1964, Mr. Horwitz
drove through the South, landing in
Jackson, Miss., where he worked for
the Mississippi Freedom Democrat-
ic Party. Eerily, he had driven through
Meridian, Miss., the night three young
men, two of whom were Jews and one
of whom was black, were beaten and
shot to death on their way to help reg-
ister black voters.
Mr. Horwitz says he learned, upon
arriving in Jackson, that three young
men on their way to Jackson were
missing, but it took weeks to learn of
their fate. Traveling through the state
as a young white male with out-of-
state license plates was frightening as
it was; Mr. Horwitz didn't tell his par-
ents about being in Mississippi until
he left.
Mr. Horwitz, 55, eventually re-
turned to Washington to work for Mr.
Conyers, the first black congressman
to serve on the Judiciary Committee.
It was unusual for the House to be
in session on holidays, but in 1965 a
critical vote was scheduled on Rosh
Hashanah eve. According to the his-
torian's office of the U.S. House of Rep-
resentatives, members voted to
consider home rule for the District of
Columbia that day, but Mr. Horwitz
remembers only that the vote involved
domestic policy. And, he recalls, it was
important enough for House Speaker
John W. McCormack to visit each of
his fellow Democrats with entreaties
to vote.
But Mr. Tenzer, who was Orthodox,

did not plan to be there. Neither did
the other Jewish congressmen.
Mr. Horwitz remembers that
Southern Democrats were opposed to
the legislation, so the vote of the Jew-
ish Democrats, particularly Mr. Ten-
zer's, was key. Mr. Tenzer, a member
of the House Judiciary Committee,
was a "mainline" Democrat" and "very
well-known, very active."
"Their absence would have killed
the bill," Mr. Horwitz says.
The Jewish members of Congress
were torn between their professional
and religious obligations.
"Their loyalty to the party, com-
mitment to the cause — how would
this look? Tenzer's view — and he con-
sulted with his rabbi — was that they
had an obligation to fulfill their re-
sponsibility as public officials.
"And as long as they observed Rosh
Hashanah, there was no specific site
required. If they had a minyan, they
could have a service. It wouldn't vio-
late Jewish law to leave the service
and go vote. Since Tenzer decided it
was OK, everybody else decided it was
OK," Mr. Horwitz says.
It was decided that they would hold
the Rosh Hashanah service in the non-
denominational chapel adjacent to the
House floor in the U.S. Capitol build-
ing.
Mr. Tenzer "hustled up a minyan,"
recruiting the young man across the
hall.
"An ark was brought in, yarmulkes,
prayer books, and i as a young ad-
ministrative assistant to another con-
gressman, became the shammes,
passing out books, t2llit, getting can-
dles.
"While the service was going on,
votes were being taken. When the

,

bells would ring, members would evac-
uate. Some would go first, others
would go later so we wouldn't lose the
minyan," Mr. Horwitz recalls.
He describes the service as "eclec-
tic — Reform, Conservative." The par-
ticipants were slightly uneasy, having
to celebrate without family and with-
out a rabbi.
It also was "disjointed" because
members were casting their votes.
"This was a peculiar service peo-
ple floating in and out," Mr. Horwitz
says. But the congressmen had ful-
filled their duties, albeit in unortho-
dox fashion.
"I've spent most of my life working
with people of conflicting backgrounds
to get them to work together. What
was memorable to me (about the Rosh
Hashanah service) was this is what
was worked out to meld these re-
sponsibilities," he says.
Pleased that the bill passed, Mr.
McCormack dropped in on the service,
put on a yarmulke and took a seat.
"He came into the service as his way
of expressing appreciation. He was a
very ardent Catholic.
"He sat there, participated in the
service and thanked the members.
The service went on and somebody
brought a bottle of wine and said Kid-
dush," Mr. Horwitz says. "I'm con-
vinced McCormack had a yarmulke
on his head many times in his life."
Mr. Horwitz, a past chairman of
the American-Arabic and Jewish
Friends of Metropolitan Detroit and
a member of Congregation T'chiyah
in Detroit, is husband to clinical so-
cial worker Naomi Pinchuk and fa-
ther to Judith, 14, and Beth, 11. He
says he was and still is a "practical
idealist." ❑ •