Every election season, someone invariably asks why I chose public life. The simple answer is that I did not see a future in which I was playing point guard for the Knicks or working as a big-time New York sports reporter. If hockey had been as popular in the city when I was a boy as it is now, maybe I would have played for the Rangers and retired to the front office, but I guess we’ll never know.
In the bigger picture, my decision to pursue elected office was a little more involved. My father, a Russian immigrant who worked tirelessly to establish a thriving hardware business on Ludlow Street, wanted more for me and for my siblings. Like generations of immigrant parents before him and since, he saw education as the avenue to prosperity and to stature in the community.
Although I went on to graduate from Brooklyn Law School, pass the bar exam, and become a practicing attorney, in the eyes of my family I was never going to reach the lofty heights of “my brother the doctor.” But like my brother Joe, I believed I had a responsibility to do more with my gifts than just accrue wealth.
Part of the answer is also the connection I have with the Lower East Side, where I was born and raised, and where I raised my family. Today, I live within three blocks of where I grew up. This historic community has given me so much, not the least of which is the opportunity to serve as an assemblyman. So, key among my efforts is the creation of new schools to meet the demand of our booming population and to give the children of this community the same opportunities I had.
Woven deeply through it all is the Jewish obligation to fight injustice, and as a young man I could clearly see that there were compelling matters of social justice that only political leadership and the law were going to cure. Wanting to make a difference, I ran for office.
What has that decision meant to the Jewish community? I’d like to think I’ve given New York’s Jewish communities a strong voice in our state government that they’d not had before.
Since entering public life, I have conducted more investigations, sponsored and led more public hearings, and authored and guided into law more legislation establishing and defending Jewish rights than any state lawmaker I know of.
Central to my efforts has been the issue of “reasonable accommodation.” In fact, in 1997 I delivered a speech in defense of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act before the National Conference of State Legislatures and argued that a constitution that can be interpreted in such a way that it does not protect the basic freedoms of even the smallest minority is no constitution at all. Since that day and throughout my public career, I have strived to advance religious freedom and reasonable accommodation in the public and private sectors as well as academia.
My record has been noted many times over the years. For instance, early in my Assembly career I authored a law guaranteeing Jewish parents the right to have a bris performed in a hospital when the mother and/or baby were hospitalized for eight days or more.
I led the effort giving Sabbath observers the right to take tests such as the SAT, civil service tests, the bar exam, and the medical boards on alternate dates when they were originally scheduled on days of religious observance.
Years ago, when a medical examiner sought to perform an autopsy when there was no compelling public necessity to do so, my autopsy law provided a religious exemption.