Jewish Attorney Accepts Highest Legal Honor in Civil Rights Advocacy

The Albany-based New York State Bar Association awarded attorney Rachel Chazin Halperin, a resident of White Plains, Westchester County, the prestigious W. Haywood Burns Award for her work in civil rights activism. Halperin is the CEO of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley (LSHV).

Halperin, like Burns, is passionate about civil rights. As CEO, Halperin supervises approximately 230 attorneys and staff in ten offices across seven counties. Halperin was awarded her high honor on Wednesday, April 15, at the Queens-based CUNY Law School.

Burns was the second dean of CUNY Law School. He served in that role for seven years from 1987 until his death in 1994. He died in a car accident on April 2, 1996, at age 55, while he was in Cape Town, South Africa, working on civil rights issues there. “He was an icon in the field of civil rights,” Halperin said.

He served as general counsel to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign and was one of the founders of the National Conference of Black Lawyers. He represented Angela Davis, 82, and prisoners after the 1970s Attica prison uprising.

On a trip to former concentration camps in Poland, as a teenager, Halperin said she was inspired to make her life count by helping vulnerable people.

“I remember seeing pictures of teenagers who looked a lot like I did and realizing that if I had simply been born at a different time, that would very likely have been me and my family,” she recounted. “All of those lives were cut short. It really stuck with me and made me feel like I had an obligation to do something significant with my life and make a small difference in the world.”

Halperin, 52, received her law degree from New York University School of Law, a Master’s degree in social work from New York University School of Social Work and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a former Board member of the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her focus during her studies was social justice, which primarily led her to fight against domestic violence, food insecurity, sexual assault, poverty, and homelessness. She has spent the last 25 years combating these systemic problems.

“I would love for somebody to put me out of business. That would be the best day of my career. It is because these are systemic problems. The systems have to change. The laws have to change,” Halperin told The Jewish Press. “The system is created to keep people in poverty and in these situations. That is why our work is so hard. It's like rolling a boulder up a mountain.”

The LSHV does not do criminal work. They leave that up to the public defender in each of the seven counties they serve, including: Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Orange, and Rockland.

“We’re for civil legal services. There are other organizations like the public defender [which handles criminal matters]. The Legal Aid Society in Westchester, for example, is the public defender. People get us confused sometimes,” Halperin said. “These are tough times in this current environment. Every day we’re just happy to live to fight the next day. Just keep doing the work,” Halperin added.

LSHV enjoys a $40 million budget and additional money is still needed.

Halperin admires the fortitude of people who come to her agency for assistance.

“People are incredibly resilient. The bravery, resourcefulness and determination that I witnessed from my clients over the years is nothing short of miraculous and truly inspirational,” Halperin told the audience of friends, relatives and colleagues. “Whether it was a mother of two young children who left all of her possessions and her support system in the middle of the night in order to keep herself and her family safe from abuse or parents who relentlessly fought their landlord to make repairs so that their babies stopped having asthma attacks from the mold in their apartment all while trying to hold down multiple jobs. People are strong. Give them the fire power of a passionate attorney and access to justice and just watch what happens. This is why we do this work. This is what keeps us going. Our clients’ resilience is the nourishment that keeps us fueled.”

Halperin, who attended a Conservative synagogue as a youngster, now belongs to the Reconstructionist-centered Bet Am Shalom synagogue in White Plains with her family and 480 family members.