26 | AUGUST 5 • 2021

Editor’s Note: Look for an
extensive tribute to the life of
Sen. Carl Levin in next week’s
Jewish News.
C

arl Levin, the Jewish
Detroiter who spent
36 years as a fierce
advocate for Michigan and the
American people in the U.S.
Senate, died July 29 at age 87.
The Levin Center at Wayne
State University Law School
announced his passing. Sen.
Levin was diagnosed with lung
cancer four years ago. The cen-
ter, named for Levin, focuses on
the passion of his career: gov-
ernment oversight.
Sen. Levin, first elected to
the Senate in 1978, became his
state’s longest-serving senator.
From 2001 until his retirement

in 2015, Sen. Levin served as
the chairman or the ranking
member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee. He always
appeared a little disheveled and
spoke softly, and his staffers
described him as a rarity — a
kind and accommodating boss
in the world’s most intense pres-
sure chamber.
“Carl Levin was a giant of a
senator and a giant of a human
being with a big heart and a kind
soul,” former California Sen.
Barbara Boxer told the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency. “He made
his mark and will go down in
history as one of the best.”
Sen. Levin could be fierce in
eliciting testimony in the Senate
as chairman of the subcommit-
tee on investigations. Hauling
Goldman Sachs executives

before his committee in 2010,
amidst the carnage of the 2008
financial collapse. Under his
intense questioning, his subjects
squirmed on camera.
Sen. Levin’s liberal econom-
ic outlook was shaped as he
watched the diminishment of
his beloved city, Detroit. He
fought hard for car manufac-
turers in Congress, knowing the
lifeblood that they were for his
state’s working class. He worked
as a taxi driver while in college
— he said he knew Detroit’s
every block. He also worked on
an assembly line at Chrysler.
Sen. Levin was a dove who
spoke out early against the
George W
. Bush administra-
tion’s plans to invade Iraq. But
as chairman of the committee
that shaped military policy,
he was also a defender of pro-
tections for the armed forces,
sometimes to what fellow
Democrats said was a fault. He
successfully prevented bids to
take investigations of sexual
misconduct out of the hands of
the line of command.

FAMILY ROOTS
Sen. Levin grew up in a mid-
dle-class household in Detroit.
His parents, Saul and Bess
Levin, were Zionists. Bess was
active in Hadassah.
Future U.S. Rep.
Sander “Sandy”
Levin was his older
brother.
“Sandy and
I and our sister
Hannah used
to call ourselves Hadassah
Orphans because when we got
home in the afternoon, my
mother was never there,
” Sen.
Levin said in an oral history for
the Detroit Jewish Federation.
“She was volunteering for
Hadassah.
”
Sen. Levin was a go-to sen-
ator for lobbyists from the
American Israel Public Affairs
Committee and was attentive

to their requests for defense
assistance to Israel. However, he
parted ways with AIPAC when
the lobby, heeding the Israeli
government, opposed the Iran
nuclear deal in 2015.
Even after his retirement in
2015, as the deal neared com-
pletion, Sen. Levin remained
influential, urging his former
colleagues to back the deal.
He was devoted to Michigan,
traveling to its farthest corners
to meet constituents. A staffer
recalled to the JTA that he con-
vened the staff after a woman in
an airport complained to him
that she had not heard back
from his office after writing.
The talk, the staffer said, was
“serious,
” but not a rebuke and
not unkind.
Sen. Levin’s brother Sander
Levin was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives in
1982, and from 2010-2012 —
when Sander was the chairman
of the tax-writing Ways and
Means Committee, and Carl
chaired the Senate Armed
Services Committee — they
were the most powerful broth-
ers in Washington.
They were throughout their
lives the closest of friends.
Sander, who retired in 2019,
was replaced by his son and
Carl’s nephew, Andy Levin.
Their cousin, Avern Cohn, the
retired U.S. District
Court judge for
Eastern Michigan,
spoke with former
JN Editor Robert
Sklar when Sen.
Levin announced
his retirement plans in 2013.
“Carl Levin’s role in the pub-
lic life of Michigan and of the
nation has set a standard that
few have ever in the past, or
indeed in the future, will come
close to,
” Cohn said.
“The Jewish people should
be particularly proud of having
contributed Carl to the public
wellbeing.
”

Sen. Carl Levin led a life
dedicated to public service.

‘A Big Heart
and a
Kind Soul’

Sander
Levin

Avern Cohn

RON KAMPEAS JTA

Sen. Carl
Levin

OUR COMMUNITY