[1][2] A native of Queens, New York City, Horowitz was educated at Yeshivat Kerem be-Yavneh, and received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University in 1975.
His dissertation was "Jewish confraternities in seventeenth-century Verona: a study in the social history of piety".
Horowitz contributed vitally to expanding the journal's horizons, approaches and subjects, helping shape it into one of the leading scholarly forums in the field of Jewish studies.
The book brought together his enduring scholarly curiosity about violence and the carnivalesque with an ethical concern for the way in which religion can be used and abused.
In 2014 Horowitz took early retirement and was appointed to the Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford for the academic year 2015-6.