Eric and Linda Horodas recently attended the Anti-Defamation League’s National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., and joined six others in telling their “ADL story” to the gathering. In their story, reprinted below, they discussed what inspires them and why they are drawn to their work for the ADL.
Eric Horodas: My ADL story started in 1904, 49 years before I was born and nine years before the ADL was even founded. How is that possible? Well, it starts in the year my maternal grandfather, Maurice Handler, arrived in the United States as an 8-year-old orphan from Galicia, which was then part of Austria. As a young man in the 1920s, he founded one of America’s leading coat and suit manufacturing companies. He thought America was the greatest country ever. He worked hard and did very well. He taught this to his family: the importance of working hard and giving back. It is not an option; it is an obligation and a responsibility.
Those have been the dual missions of my life — working hard and giving back. We all have choices about life and the imprint we leave behind. We not only leave a carbon footprint, but a compassion footprint. My grandfather left it up to me to find the outlet to express my compassion. Personally, I’ve been involved in our local community in the Bay Area for the longest time, working with both Jewish and secular institutions. I looked to the Jewish values with which I was raised and thought about how to transpose them to the broader community. How do I tackle more universal issues? How do I leave this world a better place than when I entered it?
In the ADL, I found the place where I could accomplish my compassion goals. Linda and I have been involved in getting one of ADL’s signature education initiatives, No Place for Hate, started in the San Francisco Bay Area, advocating for Israel and worldwide Jewish communities with the diplomatic community, lobbying our elected representatives on important legislation including security aid to Israel, immigration reform and effective hate crimes laws, and working to combat the deligitimization of Israel and BDS.
Linda Horodas: I wasn’t anything like Eric; actually I was nearly the total opposite. I grew up in a family that emphasized sports, culture and education, but not philanthropy or community involvement. When I married Eric and became a part of his family, initially neither he nor his mother pressured me to pursue philanthropic work. But eventually they began encouraging me to give back.
And so, I got involved in many things, but nothing really struck a permanent chord with me. Somewhere in my mind I kept being transported back to my middle school years in Morton Grove, Illinois. Although it is only eight minutes away from Skokie, it wasn’t Skokie, which is a predominantly Jewish town. It was a very different world. I remember one day one of the kids in my class asked the teacher, “Why does Linda pronounce ‘i-n-g’ so strongly?” And the teacher said “That’s because she’s Jewish and her language is much more guttural.”
Once there was an incident of bathroom vandalism at school. I was accused and was made the scapegoat, with vile anti-Semitic slurs thrown at me by the other kids. I told the teachers about it, but no one paid very much attention to me or to what I was saying.
I went home in tears and told my mother what had happened. And so my mother marched into the principal’s office with me and said, “My daughter does not lie, and what kind of school allows anti-Semitic remarks?” She was a strong woman, and that determined voice stayed with me.
These and other similar experiences taught me I had to stand up against bigotry, any bigotry against anyone, anytime. That was something I was very sure about at a very early age. And so at ADL I found my voice for all the things I believe in. I found my home and my extended family; I found my forever home.
Eric and Linda Horodas are ADL national commissioners and members of the ADL’s Central Pacific Regional Board, where Eric formerly served as regional board chair, a position Linda will assume in January. They live in the Montclair section of Oakland.