Meet the New AHA Staff Member: Amitai Heller
Please welcome the AHA’s new Legal Director, Amitai Heller!
What is your educational and work background?
I’ve spent the past decade as a civil rights litigator, focused on using the law to empower people facing difficult circumstances. Before joining the AHA, I worked at Compassion & Choices, advocating for the bodily autonomy of terminally ill individuals. Prior to that, I was at Disability Rights Louisiana, fighting discrimination against people with disabilities. Earlier in my career, I was deeply involved in the tenants’ rights movement in San Francisco, organizing and educating tenants about their legal rights. I took a circuitous route to law with plenty of unglamorous jobs in the middle, including bar-backing, factory work, cash register guy, etc.
I hold a J.D. from CUNY Law in Queens, NY, and a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz.
How did you first learn about humanism?
My sister was married by a humanist rabbi. I thought I knew a lot about Judaism (see below) but that was a first for me. After the wedding I found myself going down the online humanist wormhole. After doing the reading I thought, “yeah, this is pretty much me.”
Did you grow up in a traditional religious faith? How did it impact you?
My early life was spent in a Jewish socialist commune (kibbutz) but the community was secular. For example, we would sing traditional Jewish songs on holidays but mentions of god were replaced with allusions to nature, or the proletariat, or the general concept of creation.
After we left the kibbutz and came to America, my parents became much more religious. I went to a Jewish school where we would pray every day, have Torah-study classes, etc. My weekends were spent going to synagogue or spending time with other Jewish families. It was a very insular community and I didn’t seriously know any non-Jewish people until I was in high school. On the other hand, the secular education we received was good and encouraged discourse and critical thinking. As a result of this, it was not too difficult to reason my way out of belief in the Abrahamic god and other such dogma while still being able to extrapolate some of the progressive values that were introduced to me as core to the religion. While I don’t consider myself a practicing Jew, I don’t feel traumatized by my experience. That said, I absolutely understand why others might.
What interested you most about working for the American Humanist Association?
I’m attracted to the AHA’s vision for building a more engaged secular community and movement. In my experience technical legal victories can be short-lived if there isn’t some form of people-centered social movement to vigilantly enforce the gains. Similarly, civil rights litigation undertaken without the input of a movement can result in lawyers dedicating themselves to issues that are not priorities for the people whose behalf they are fighting. I look forward to developing this approach further with the AHA.
What book has influenced you the most?
I’ll cheat a little and say that reading various punk zines in high school is the literature that most impacted my life trajectory. These pamphlets, usually written by people only a couple years older than me, revealed a hidden world of adventure, culture, and politics. In the pre-internet era there was really no other way for me to find out about bands or nascent political movements in neighboring states. I learned that people were still hopping trains, feeding houseless people from impromptu community kitchens, and going on national tours to play in basements around the country. The DIY punk world that was being written about in these zines was also my first introduction into left politics and led me to authors that would go on to greatly influence my thinking and lifestyle at the time, like Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Angela Davis.
If you could have dinner with any three people in the world (living or dead), who would they be and why?
I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of my heroes and it can be a little disappointing. So, I’d probably just want to get my closest friends together (I won’t say which three 😊). We’re scattered across the country, juggling jobs and family, and never really get the chance to just spend time together having fun. And then maybe we can add Mozart to mix if he’s anything like his depiction in Amadeus.