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