Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Howard Leibowitz, Aide to 2 Boston Mayors, Dies at 63

BOSTON — Howard Leibowitz, an influential behind-the-scenes aide to two Boston mayors and a leader in Jewish causes, has died.

Leibowitz died suddenly of a heart attack on Sunday. He was 63.

Leibowitz, a Brandeis University graduate, was recalled as a passionate strategist and advocate for the homeless, fair housing and racial justice. He brought a tireless and innovative advocacy to Jewish and universal causes.

He was a board member of the Jewish Alliance for Social Justice, which had planned to honor him on Jan. 24 for a lifetime of service.

“Although he wasn’t religious, he devoted his life to tikkun olam,” or repairing the world, his lifelong friend Peter Dreier, a professor at Occidental College, wrote in the Huffington Post. “There are millions of Americans — around the country and in Boston — whose lives were improved by Howard’s work, even though they didn’t know him or don’t even know his name.”

Sheila Decter, executive director of the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, told the Boston Globe that Leibowitz “was a wonderful enabler and facilitator and didn’t need any credit” for his work.

Leibowitz started out at Boston City Hall in 1987 as a housing adviser in the then-new administration of Mayor Ray Flynn. Noted for his political acumen, imaginative strategies and ability to connect with people from all walks of life, Leibowitz was tapped as Flynn’s director of intergovernmental relations.

He remained for many years in the succeeding administration of the late Tom Menino, and helped both mayors become nationally recognized leaders.

“Howard represented all that is good and decent about politics: honesty, kindness and loyalty,” Flynn told the Boston Globe. “His agenda was about helping people and the values of social and economic justice.”

Since April, Leibowitz worked for Community Enterprise Partners, a nonprofit affordable housing organization in Washington, D.C.

He is survived by his wife, Constance Doty, and three brothers, Steven, Laurence and Peter. A public memorial service is being planned.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.