Horowitz’s Sunday school program never addressed the true meaning of being Jewish, nor did it teach students something as fundamental as alef-beis. His bar mitzvah pretty much emphasized the bar, not the mitzvah aspect of the milestone event, and was held at a Reform temple. Horowitz’s upbringing in a home that had no connection to the Torah mirrored that of his maternal grandmother, Lee Tishkoff, who lived nearby. Born in Vienna, her family left the city overnight in 1938 after her father, a successful lawyer, was tipped off by a client that if he wanted his loved ones to survive, they needed to evacuate immediately.

While his grandmother’s wartime experiences were never up for discussion when Horowitz was a child, he has vivid memories of going to the nearby Museum of Tolerance when he was five years old, accompanied by his mother and grandmother. Despite never having heard of World War II, the museum struck a chord deep within the little boy’s heart.

“It really triggered me,” says Horowitz. “I saw a swastika and I had to leave. It was a disturbing feeling, kind of like I had been there before.”

That visit was the first time that Horowitz had a soul-stirring sense of déjà vu. There was no way he could have known that it wasn’t going to be his last.

On the Wrong Team?

Ironically, it was being in a Catholic school that brought Horowitz face to face with his Judaism. As the rare junior who made the school’s varsity team, a privilege usually granted only to seniors, he found his locker defaced with a swastika after scoring an important goal in a tournament final. Having come in from California for the game, Horowitz’s mother, Diane Tishkoff, had her car keyed with a swastika as well. While Horowitz could have dismissed the graffiti as an immature rite of initiation, he understood that the prep school prank had deeper overtones.

“I was on the team, trying to break into their world, and they were sending a message saying, ‘You’re not one of us,’ ” observes Horowitz. “It made me realize that no matter what, I was never going to be fully accepted as one of them.”

The more Horowitz thought about what had happened, the more it solidified the maelstrom of thoughts swirling in his head.

“By sixteen or seventeen, I was on the doorstep, feeling like there was more to life,” says Horowitz. “I wasn’t fitting in, and I was fine with that, but what was life all about? Things didn’t make sense, and I had more questions than answers.”

As a high school senior, Horowitz began eyeing prestigious colleges where he could continue developing both his hockey skills and his education, but he had other considerations for the short term. Typically, hockey players spend two years after high school playing in what is known as “juniors” to prepare them for college-level athletics. After his graduation, Horowitz spent a year living with his aunt in Connecticut as he played for the Junior Rangers team in Stamford. That summer when he was 18 was pivotal for Horowitz: He’d launched a women’s clothing business as a side hustle, and also heard about Birthright’s free Israel trips from some friends.

“I had zero Jewish anything since my bar mitzvah, but people told me that if you’re Jewish you can go,” recalls Horowitz. “All my life growing up I had heard that Israel wasn’t safe, and when I told my mother I was going, she told me that it was a dangerous place for Jews. But I could get to Europe from Israel basically for free, so I didn’t care.”

Horowitz boarded his flight to Tel Aviv outwardly going through the motions of the Birthright trip, while inwardly counting down the days until he could fly off to Europe. But the moment he landed in Israel, he was overtaken by unexpectedly powerful feelings.

“It was like what had happened at the Holocaust museum,” Horowitz remembers. “It was like a lightning bolt that went right through me.”

For the next ten days, Horowitz felt a sense of connection that he had never experienced before, and putting on tefillin for the first time in his life at the age of 18 at the Kosel awakened yet another slew of feelings in his heart. While the Birthright trip placed zero emphasis on Torah or mitzvos, Horowitz basked in the Jewish pride that was very much a part of the itinerary.

“I fell in love with the land of Israel,” he says. “I got a Magen David and starting owning the fact that I was a Jew, which was about more than just getting swastikaed.”

When the Birthright trip ended, Horowitz cancelled his plans for Europe and considered joining the Israeli army, an idea that his mother quickly vetoed. Instead, she agreed to let Horowitz extend his stay for another month, and by the time Horowitz returned to the United States for his second year of juniors, he already knew what he would be doing as soon as he graduated from college — enlisting in the IDF.

Power Forward

Horowitz spent the next ten months playing for the Junior Islanders, boarding at his coach’s house where an Israeli flag hung proudly in his bedroom. He attended Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur synagogue services for the first time in his life, and as the year progressed, he realized that he had come to a crossroads. Not having devoted himself exclusively to hockey over the past five years meant that making it to the NHL was an unlikely prospect, and his next best option, playing Division 1 hockey for an Ivy League or similar school, had somehow lost its allure.

Contemplating his college options, Horowitz decided to follow his heart, choosing NYU so that he could be around other Jews. The school’s hockey team was respectable, the school gave him a hockey scholarship, and Horowitz was okay with the idea of being the top player on NYU’s roster.

Meanwhile, Horowitz spent his days and nights playing for the Junior Islanders, while also continuing his quest to find answers to the questions that had dogged him since childhood. He devoured self-help books and explored transcendental meditation, but found little that satisfied him. And a summer trip to the Far East to find meaning proved to be both unproductive and unsettling.

Once he started NYU the following fall, however, things were different. On his first day on campus, Horowitz spotted a rabbi holding a sign saying, “Are you Jewish? We’ll give you $300.” The offer was too good to resist, and soon Horowitz found himself face to face with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Eisemann, NYU’s campus director of MEOR, a kiruv organization that has been mentoring college students since 2005. Even though Horowitz wasn’t able to take advantage of MEOR’s Jewish programming at NYU because the hockey team played on Shabbos, the two spoke periodically. Eventually, Horowitz decided to confront Rabbi Eisemann with his lengthy list of existential questions, that had, so far, yielded only unsatisfactory answers.

“I was going to disprove this rabbi once and for all, because I was sure that he didn’t know what he was talking about either,” recalls Horowitz. “But he had answers, good answers, and I left there with answers and questions and real thinking conversations, realizing that there was something there.”

Buoyed by that encounter, Horowitz made staying in contact with Rabbi Eisemann a priority even though his commitments to the hockey team and his fraternity activities precluded attending any of MEOR’s student programs. As the weeks went by, it became increasingly clear to Horowitz that his life lacked real meaning, and that the more he indulged in clubs, partying and living large, the emptier he felt. Still, when Rabbi Eisemann started calling him every day to convince him to join MEOR’s summer Israel trip, Horowitz resisted the idea, finally acquiescing when the trip was rebranded in a way that piqued his interest.

“Rabbi Eisemann showed me a picture of an ATV, and knowing I had gone on Birthright, he called it Birthright Part II,” says Horowitz, never once realizing just how different this experience would be.

Reality Trip

Landing in Israel with visions of ATVs and adventures dancing in his head, Horowitz was less than pleased to find himself on an Orthodox kibbutz, with nary an off-road vehicle in sight.

“They told us that we were basically going to yeshivah for two weeks, and having been sold on Birthright II, I was very mad,” says Horowitz. “I called my mom and told her that they had tricked me, and that she had been right all along when she warned me that those Jews were going to get me.”

From Horowitz’s perspective, things went rapidly downhill. Arriving in a yeshivah at the end of the week, the group was informed that they were all going to be keeping Shabbos. That concept resonated with students who had attended MEOR programming all year, but Horowitz knew literally nothing about Shabbos. Discovering that he needed to turn off his phone for Shabbos sent Horowitz deeper into a tailspin, and he called his mother to tell her that if she didn’t hear from him over the next 25 hours, she should call the police to confirm that he was still alive and well.

Having always viewed organized religion as a crutch to escape the problems of the world, Horowitz went into Shabbos angry and reluctant, but his dark mood evaporated quickly. Hearing Kiddush was a transformative experience, giving Horowitz the feeling that he wasn’t alone, and sparking that now-familiar sensation of knowing that this was something that had once been part of him, although when or where that might have been, he simply had no idea.

The Friday night seudah was surreal for Horowitz, who was mesmerized seeing that everyone was present, with no distractions. Having had friends growing up in Beverly Hills whose parents had been married five times, and others who had zero connection with their mothers or fathers, Horowitz couldn’t believe the close family interactions he was seeing.

“I grew up around a lot of wealth, and I always thought that if I had money, it would solve so many problems, but money wasn’t the answer,” explains Horowitz. “That Shabbos in yeshivah, seeing rabbis with their families, and the relationships they had with their kids, was something I hadn’t seen anywhere else, and I knew I had to figure out what they had.”

Horowitz was intrigued by his small taste of Orthodox Judaism, and the class about the mitzvah of tefillin given by MEOR founder Rabbi Beryl Gershenfeld resonated with him. And so, two years after he first laid tefillin at the Kosel, Horowitz bought a pair of his own, and he has put them on every day since.

Into the Net

The next semester, Horowitz went to study in London as an NYU exchange student. Having already seen the global reach of Jewish networking, he texted Rabbi Eisemann to find out if he could set him up for Rosh Hashanah with a synagogue and meals — not having considered that he and Rabbi Eisemann probably had different ideas of what that shul should look like.

“I expected it to be a Reform temple, but that wasn’t the case,” says Horowitz. “He sent me to Golders Green, and I walked in with my headphones and a short-sleeved shirt to a really shtark shul.”

Another thing that hadn’t occurred to Horowitz was that attempting to contact his host by phone on Rosh Hashanah wasn’t going to work, and he was more than a little surprised that his calls to Rabbi Sandor Milun of the Jewish Learning Exchange went unanswered. But any awkwardness he might have felt vanished the minute he walked into Rabbi Milun’s home.

“It was the first time I had been in a frum person’s house and I was actually brought to tears,” says Horowitz. “The scene was like everything I had ever wanted, even though I had never known that this existed.”

Horowitz broke new ground in other ways in London as well, making his first Orthodox friends and taking advantage of local Jewish programming, something he had never been able to do at NYU because of his conflicting hockey schedule. By the time he returned to NYU for the spring semester, he was actively considering keeping Shabbos.

That summer, Horowitz was back in Israel, this time through an Aish HaTorah program. Making his way to the Kosel late one night, Horowitz decided that he wanted to daven, joining one of the minyanim that had formed there. The fact that he hadn’t yet learned the alef-beis posed one challenge, the lack of any English siddurim presented another. Still, he forged ahead, taking a siddur, which in retrospect, he’s pretty sure he was holding upside down. Seeing that Horowitz was clearly out of his element, a yeshivah student from Brisk approached him, and politely asked if there was some way he could be helpful.

The young man introduced himself as Sruli Horowitz. While the two shared a last name, they made the unlikeliest pair, at least on the outside, with Sruli Horowitz looking every inch the Brisker from Boro Park, while Frank Horowitz was at the Kosel in a tank top. The Brisker Horowitz took his new friend right up to the Kosel and instructed him to shout “kukuriku” (the Israeli version of cock-a-doodle-do) at the top of his lungs.

“We were screaming kukuriku and he was telling me that all you need to do to talk to G-d is to say kukuriku, and He will answer,” Frank Horowitz recalls.

Despite their differences, the two became fast friends, with Frank Horowitz visiting his Brisker buddy in his dirah in Geula for hours on end that summer. Even after Frank Horowitz returned to NYU, the relationship continued despite the seven-hour time difference, with long, late-night phone calls tackling an array of fundamental and esoteric Jewish topics.

Returning to New York, the sparks of Yiddishkeit continued to ignite, and in addition to his relationship with Rabbi Eisemann, Horowitz connected with Rabbi Yonah Korn of Chabad of the Bowery. Hoping to find a place to continue his Torah education, Horowitz did an online search for “where to learn Torah near me,” with Google leading him to Yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv. He became a regular on the A train to Far Rockaway, finding a spot in the back seat of the yeshivah’s beis medrash where he would learn Chumash in English. But no matter how much Torah he was imbibing, he couldn’t escape the fact that he was at NYU on a hockey scholarship, and that games were most often played on Shabbos.

Horowitz did the best that he could at the time. When the games were on Friday nights, he walked to the rink, a distance of two and a half miles each way. He was eating a kosher-style diet, trying not to mix milk and meat, and only having fish when he went out, taking his blue Stone Chumash with him everywhere he went. Things came to a head one night when Horowitz stopped in a restaurant for a quick bite on his way to a game because he hadn’t eaten all day. Discovering that every dish on the menu contained meat left him completely frazzled, but he ordered something, knowing that he had to eat in order to be able to play. Yet as he waited for his food to come, he took out his Chumash, which opened up to the page that discusses the prohibition of not eating a kid cooked in its mother’s milk — a pretty clear message about kashrus.

“When the food came, I told them I couldn’t eat it and sent it back, even though I was starving,” says Horowitz. “From that point on, I have only eaten kosher food.”

Horowitz even started wearing tzitzis after randomly opening his Chumash to the section that discusses that very mitzvah, and at one game, Horowitz’s coach nearly cut off his tzitzis as they dangled out of his jersey, thinking they were loose strings. And when Horowitz removed his helmet between periods during a game with his yarmulke remaining in place, his coached called out, “Frank, the inside of your baseball cap is still on your head!”

Horowitz eventually stopped showing up at his college classes, spending his time instead in Sh’or Yoshuv.  He would frequently speak to Rabbi Korn about wanting to drop hockey because he had to play on Shabbos, and week after week, a pattern emerged at the NYU hockey games, with Horowitz being the worst player on Friday night, while emerging as the game’s MVP just 24 hours later, when Shabbos was over. Unable to cope with the conflicting segments of his life, Horowitz asked Hashem to help him find a way to be able to keep Shabbos without having to quit the hockey team. His prayers were answered at his next game, when someone tripped him from behind as he skated with the puck toward the goal. Horowitz fell on his thumb, suffering a bad break. It was the first time he had ever been injured in a game.

“I couldn’t play hockey for eight weeks and yes, it hurt pretty bad, but I remember smiling going to the hospital,” says Horowitz. “I called Rabbi Korn and said, ‘I can keep Shabbos, I can keep Shabbos! I broke my hand so I don’t have to play hockey anymore!’ ”

That week Horowitz kept his first full Shabbos and his next seven hockey-free weeks were pure bliss, but finally the moment of truth came when his thumb was healed and he was facing another Friday night hockey game, with playoff season looming. There were two back-to-back games, one on Friday night and one on Saturday night, both played on an alcohol-free Catholic campus. He played on Friday night but wasn’t at his best, making the Saturday night game critical for NYU. Winning that game meant heading to the playoffs, while losing meant going home.

While Horowitz typically made Havdalah before his Motzaei Shabbos games, the timing was earlier that weekend, and he had no choice but to bring his entire Havdalah kit with him to the game. After managing to convince a security guard to let his Havdalah wine onto the dry campus, Horowitz made Havdalah exactly at the zeman, which was in the middle of his coach’s pregame pep talk. Not surprisingly, the coach was livid, screaming at Horowitz for trying to get drunk before the biggest game of the year and telling him that he was going too far with “this Judaism thing.”

“I went out on the ice and had the best game of my life,” says Horowitz. “I got three goals and when we came back into the locker room, everyone went over to my Havdalah kit and started dipping their fingers into the wine like I’d done, saying ‘We want this Jew juice!’ ”

That was the last time Horowitz played hockey on Shabbos. The next week, he went to Rabbi Korn’s house on Friday night and the two did what they had done so many times before — they walked up Fifth Avenue together as Horowitz headed toward the rink, with Rabbi Korn wishing him a good Shabbos at the halfway point before turning around to go home. Finally ready to commit to his Yiddishkeit, Horowitz refused to take another step, telling Rabbi Korn that he was done playing hockey on Shabbos.

Horowitz spent a magical Shabbos with the Korns, returning home after Havdalah. As he turned on his phone, he was deluged with messages from his teammates, all of whom wanted to know where he was.

“What’s going on?” read one.

“Where are you,” said another.

“I hate you,” announced a third.

Horowitz didn’t even bother going to NYU’s game that Motzaei Shabbos, choosing instead to walk away from the team. He spent a few days wondering what would happen with his scholarship, but that issue resolved itself when COVID broke out the following week, officially sidelining the school’s hockey program for the foreseeable future. Horowitz went back to L.A. where he did his schoolwork online, reconnecting with Rabbi Baruch Gradon, Rabbi Gedalya Schorr, and several other local rabbis who had been involved in his journey along the way.

The forced lockdowns gave Horowitz plenty of time to think about how he intended to live the new life he was envisioning for himself, and the answer was clear — he needed to be in a yeshivah. He made plans to go to Machon Yaakov in Jerusalem the following year.

Meanwhile, Horowitz was learning Torah at home and keeping Shabbos as best he could under the circumstances. Watching her son putting on tefillin and davening was life-changing for Diane Tishkoff, and soon the two were learning together, with Yiddishkeit becoming a shared passion. By the time Horowitz went to Israel that August, his mother was making her own commitment to Judaism and had connected to a rabbi in Los Angeles. Within the year, Horowitz had convinced his mother to join him in Israel, where she soon met her new husband: a Vienna-born baal teshuvah and chassid named Dr. Ronnie Grosz, a historian and current manager of the Albert Einstein archives at the Hebrew University.

Eye on the Goal

Attending yeshivah full-time was a dream come true for Horowitz. In addition to reveling in his learning, Horowitz was able to indulge in his love of hockey, joining Israel’s national team and playing in Israel’s Maccabi games as well as the International Ice Hockey Federation’s annual tournament without ever having to compromise his religious standards.

Midway through his second year at Machon Yaakov, Horowitz decided he was ready to start dating, and was introduced to Raquel Abraham, a former Miami resident who had made aliyah. The two married in September 2022 and settled into their new life together in Israel, with Horowitz starting work in real estate high-tech sales. At the beginning of the Gaza war, they went back to the United States to regroup for a few weeks, and after consulting with rabbinic mentors, decided to settle temporarily in Los Angeles where they’re living for the time being, although they still have plans to return to Israel at the right time for them.

Horowitz may have walked away from his college hockey team, but he hasn’t given up on the sport that he loves, elated that being frum and a hockey player in L.A. are no longer mutually exclusive, with leagues existing for both adults and kids. In addition to playing in several local leagues, Horowitz coaches children and adults, and also teaches kids to skate, a prerequisite for the game, and a skill that can yield dividends on its own.

“I really think it’s a life lesson, that you can go from being scared and on the verge of not knowing how you’re going to push through, to seeing yourself making progress and gaining confidence,” notes Horowitz.

Making a clean break from the professional hockey life was the right decision for Horowitz, and seeing the names of his friends who play in the big leagues reminds of him of the days they had on the ice together. Still, there are elements of his hockey life that he misses, including the competition, the ability to overcome obstacles without hesitation, the camaraderie of being on a team and sharing a common mission, and the thrill of scoring goals.

For Frank Horowitz, living in such close proximity to where he grew up, albeit under such different circumstances, is dreamlike, the Pico Jewish community an oasis of Torah and tefillah in the middle of Los Angeles’s split personality of glitz and grime.

“I love being part of this community,” he says. “I can be in the heart of an area where I wasn’t always doing the most Jewish things and I’m able to be surrounded by kedushah, and that gives me a lot of joy.”

Horowitz also feels blessed to be married to Raquel, who is currently working in UCLA’s kiruv scene. Both of them are warm, understated and are all heart, their home oozing a healthy sense of self, from the large blue surfboard propped up outside the front door, to the triple white bookshelves filled with seforim in both Hebrew and English that are arranged neatly by color.

Being able to relate to people whose childhood years were devoid of Torah is particularly meaningful to both Frank and Raquel, who hope to continue to influence others positively.

“I really appreciate all the little things I do,” explains Horowitz. “I appreciate every word of tefillah that I’m able to say in Hebrew. I appreciate that although I didn’t know the alef-beis a few years ago, and now I can read Hebrew. I appreciate the fact that I never thought I would have a healthy marriage and I do. I appreciate everything — my relationship to food and to money, and trying to look at it all through the lens of Torah. And I think the greatest gift I was given was having gone through this journey to get here.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)