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Borofsky, Samuel Hyman

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Born at Wolkovyshki, government of Suvalki, Russian Poland, April, 1865. He was educated in the schools of his native place, and afterward in the Jews' Free School at Manchester, England, to which place he had been taken in 1874. In 1876 he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, and in 1879 removed to Boston, Mass., where his mother and the rest of his family had preceded him.

Borofsky has been a justice of the peace since Sept. 15, 1891, a notary public since April 10, 1894, and was a member of the Boston city council in 1898, and captain of the sixth company infantry, Massachusetts provisional militia, in 1898 and 1899. In 1900 he was elected a member of the Massachusetts house of representatives. He drafted and assisted in the enactment of what is known as the "Five-Cent Ice Bill," which compels ice-dealers, under penalty of $100 fine, to sell ice in five-cent pieces to all desiring such, thus conferring a great boon upon the poor in summer.

In 1901 Borofsky presented a bill to exempt persons observing the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath from any penalty for keeping shops open or for performing secular business and labor on the first day of the week. The bill was defeated in the house of representatives on April 12, but three days later it was reconsidered and passed. On being referred to the committee on judiciary of the senate it encountered great opposition, and on May 29 the Senate rejected it by a vote of 21 to 6 (see "Boston Herald," April 15, 1901; "Boston Globe," April 26, 1901; "Jewish Comment," May 10, 1901).

Borofsky in 1899 organized and successfully established The Helping Hand Temporary Home for Destitute Jewish Children. He is a contributor on social and Jewish questions to several Boston newspapers.