HARTFORD – Rabbi Dr. Philip Lazowski of West Hartford will receive the 2015 Jim Calhoun Spirit of Achievement Award on Thursday, April 16 at the 35th annual Induction Ceremony and Dinner of the Junior Achievement Southwest New England, to be held at the Hartford Marriott. The annual event recognizes business and community leaders who have made significant contributions to the prosperity and quality of life in the Greater Hartford region and Connecticut. Several Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame laureates will also be honored at the event.

Lazowski, who served as spiritual leader of Beth Hillel Synagogue from 1969 to 2000, is chaplain at the Institute of Living, and for the Hartford Police and the Connecticut State Senate. He serves on the Board of Visitors at the University of Hartford’s Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies and has authored and published a dozen books.

Born in 1930 near Vilna in Bielice, Poland (now Belarus), he survived the Holocaust by hiding for almost three years in the White Russian woods. He arrived in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1947 and was ordained by the Academy of Higher Jewish Learning in 1962 and, in 1970, was awarded his Doctorate of Jewish Literature from Jewish Teachers Seminary and People’s University. In 1985, he was awarded a Doctorate by the Jewish Theological Seminary.