This Ex-Convict Turned His Life Around and Is Helping the Jewish Community

From the looks of it, it didn’t seem like Sammy Horowitz had a bright future ahead of him.

After getting into trouble with the law, he spent eight-and-a-half years in prison, and much of it in solitary confinement. He overdosed three times on heroin and had to be resuscitated. He had no college education, and because he had a felony on his record, the only job he could get was working as a bouncer.

Then Sammy discovered mixed martial arts (MMA) and boxing – and turned his life around.

“The best thing I could do is become a professional fighter,” he said.

Sammy fought – literally and figuratively – to get to where he is today. Despite his rough start in life, he’s now accomplished in his career, and since October 7, he’s been unabashedly publicly and proudly Jewish. But the monumental shift didn’t happen overnight.

“I believe God saved me for a reason,” he told Aish. “It doesn’t make sense otherwise, because I was a really bad person back then. I’ve had a psychic change. The way I act and think is not the same. The only conclusion I can come up with is divine providence.”

Getting Into Trouble

Sammy grew up outside of Cleveland and Chicago. He was always stirring up trouble and spent time in and out of juvenile hall.

“I got into many fights and started doing drugs from a pretty young age,” he said.

When he was older, he joined gangs and ended up robbing a drug dealer – which sealed his fate for the next near-decade of his life.

“When I was 18, I went into prison because me and some other guys went to rob a drug dealer, and a woman in the house we invaded jumped out of the window and called the cops,” he said. “We got arrested.”

Initially, Sammy spent five years and seven months in prison before he got out on parole. But he went right back to his old ways and was sent to the slammer for another three years.

“I wasn’t a well-behaved inmate,” he said. “I got into a lot of fights. Out of the eight-and-a-half years I was in prison, I spent probably over five of them in solitary confinement. They take away all your electronics and commissary and put you in a room. If you’re lucky, they put you with someone else, but you are both technically in confinement 24 hours a day.”

There were times when Sammy would use the solitary confinement to read and learn. Early on, a Chabad rabbi visited him in prison, and they struck up a friendship. Sammy had grown up keeping kosher at home for part of his childhood, and he had gone to Hebrew school and gone to Israel. The rabbi came every month to visit the Jewish inmates, and there were periods when Sammy would read a siddur and study Judaism.

“I just wanted to mentally escape and read books,” he said. “Then, at times, I’d be getting into confrontations and fights. I wasn’t somebody who was trying to better himself in prison. I didn’t think I’d ever have a decent life, so I’d given up on that.”

One of the many low points of being in prison was being targeted by the guards because he was wearing a “chai” necklace. Despite his dealings with the law, Sammy would wear his chai proudly. He was once trying to leave to go to lunch or the yard, and a lieutenant held his arm out and asked where Sammy was going.

“He told me, ‘You can’t have that necklace,’” Sammy said. “I said, ‘I’m Jewish, and I’m allowed to have this.’ Then, I held up my ID card, and on the back of it, it said, ‘Jewish.’ Back in the day, the Illinois Department of Corrections would list your religion on the back of your ID.”

The lieutenant instructed Sammy to go up to his cell and to give a permit for the necklace to another officer. Sammy had one from the chaplain who approved all religious necklaces. The next officer came back after a few minutes and told Sammy that the lieutenant wanted the necklace, and that he could sort it out later.

“I said, ‘I’m not giving up.’ A few minutes later, three correctional officers and two lieutenants opened the door of my cell. They didn’t follow protocol. The lieutenant shoved me up against the wall. I punched him in the face, and they proceeded to pepper spray me and beat me to the ground. They kicked me and punched me and knocked me unconscious and said a few antisemitic things.”

Sammy was charged with staff assault and given one year in solitary confinement; he served seven months of it. He also landed on the front page of The Chicago Jewish News, with the headline “Hateful Crime: The case of the Jewish prisoner beaten up for wearing a chai necklace.”

“Me being Jewish certainly had to do with the way they treated me thereafter,” Sammy said. “I showed him my permit, and it didn’t matter.”

Changing His Life

When Sammy finally got out of prison in October of 2010, he had his GED – which he earned while behind bars. He didn’t clean up his life right away, though. He kept trying to get off heroin, but overdosed three times.

“I was either resuscitated in the back of an ambulance or in the emergency room of a hospital,” he said. “The third time it happened, I went into a 12-step program and started training for fighting. That got me into MMA and boxing, which is what I was motivated to do.”

Sammy became a professional boxer and toured all around the U.S., and then decided to try his hand at stunts. In 2013, he got on his first TV show doing stunts, and eventually got his Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card, which meant he could work more often on movies and TV sets.

“I started working regularly in Chicago around 2015 because there was a big film industry there,” he said.

He snagged roles on “Chicago P.D.” and “Westworld,” and in 2017, he and his wife Sari, an actress, moved to Los Angeles. He linked up with a writing partner, Adam Pasen, and together, they got staffed on the show “Power Book IV: Force.” They also wrote and sold a movie that hasn’t yet been made and are currently developing further projects.

Sammy and his wife, Sari

“All of my scripts feature a strong Jew,” Sammy said. “I want to create Jewish characters that aren’t the archetype we’ve seen over the past 50 years in Hollywood. I’m trying to show a different side of Jewish people, like gangsters and athletes. This is a new version of the Jew in Hollywood: the strong Jew. The badass Jew. Those are the characters I want to put on screen.”

The Gut Punch of October 7

Ten days after October 7, Sammy got on a plane to Israel to volunteer. He did security work “and other odds and ends,” he said. “I was sick to my stomach about October 7. I couldn’t think about anything else. When I went to Israel, I didn’t want to leave. I had a feeling like, ‘This is where you belong.’”

While Sammy was in Israel, he visited the Kotel, put on a yarmulke, and started wearing tzitzit.

Though he wanted to stay in Israel to try to help out, his wife urged him to come home.

“She said, ‘Come back. There are people who need you here,’” said Sammy, who listened to his wife and got on a plane to California. “I was really racking my brain, trying to figure out what I could do to make a difference at home.”

After seeing all the antisemitism happening in California and around the world, Sammy came up with an idea: He’d start the Bear Jew Boxing Club and teach self-defense to the Jewish community for free. Now, every Sunday, he runs co-ed and women’s only classes and has gained quite the following in his local LA community.“It’s a dangerous time to be a Jew, and everybody should learn self-defense,” he said. “That’s just the world we live in right now.”

At the same time, he hasn’t taken his yarmulke off since October 7, and he and Sari have begun to observe Shabbat.

“I started taking Torah lessons with a rabbi from Chabad, and we go there for Friday night and Saturday services,” he said. “What I’d like to do is eventually become observant.”

Looking back on his life, Sammy now knows God kept him alive for a reason. Now, it’s up to Sammy to take the reins.

“I want to leave the world a better place than I found it,” he said. “That’s all I need.”