12 | AUGUST 12 • 2021 

C

arl Levin was more than Michigan’s 
longest-serving senator in 
Washington — and the longest-serv-
ing Jewish U.S. senator in American history.
He was truly a “Giant of the Senate.
”
Ironically, another senator who was also 
Jewish, Minnesota’s Al Franken, once wrote 
a book with the satirical title, Al Franken, 
Giant of the Senate. Like Franken, Levin was 
a man who could laugh at himself. But that 
phrase would be anything but satire if it 
were used to describe Carl Levin. He really 
was all that — and more.
Levin, who left the Senate in 2015 after 
serving six terms and 36 years, died July 29, 
2021. He was 87 years old.
But he is unlikely to be soon forgotten. 
Levin won near-universal acclaim for the 
work that he did as chair of the Senate 
Armed Services Committee, where he 
became famous for rooting out examples of 
waste and bloated and unnecessary spend-
ing. In his role as chair of the Governmental 
Affairs Investigations Subcommittee, he 
fought hard and often successfully to 
hold Wall Street firms accountable, nota-
bly Goldman Sachs. He tried to limit the 
amount of surveillance intelligence agen-

cies did on the communications of private 
American citizens.
Levin, perhaps more than any other con-
temporary senator, was a master of some-
times mind-numbing detail on virtually 
every topic that came before his committee. 
“You have to really know a subject if you 
are going to examine or cross-examine a 
witness,
” he once told the National Journal, 
and woe could come unto anyone who tes-
tified before him without having done his 
homework. 
Yet, though he had a strong profile on 
national issues, he was a Detroiter — and a 
Jewish Detroiter — to the core. Born in the 
city on June 28, 1934, he was the third of 
three children of Bess and Saul Levin, and 
grew up mainly on Boston Boulevard. All 
went to Roosevelt Elementary and Central 
High School in the city.

JEWISH VALUES
Earlier this year, when Sen. Levin’s book 
Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 
Years in the U.S. Senate was published by 
Wayne State University Press, he told me 
that he had been heavily influenced by 
being Jewish. “It surely did. I think the 

values in Judaism are important — the 
values of being charitable, of thinking of 
others, the important Jewish values, which I 
learned early in life.
”
The history of antisemitism, he said, “has 
made me very sensitive to others who are 
victims of prejudices and discrimination.
” 
In the late 1970s, the senator and his 
wife, Barbara, and 10 other families formed 
a new congregation, T’
chiyah, a small 
Reconstructionist congregation.
But besides Judaism, politics and pub-
lic service were in Carl Levin’s blood. His 
father was a lawyer in practice with his 
brother Theodore “Ted” Levin who later 
became a highly respected U.S. District 
Court judge, the one for whom the federal 
courthouse in Detroit is now named.
Carl’s brother, Sander, three years older, 
preceded him into politics, serving as 
Michigan Senate majority leader before 
losing two close elections for governor and 
finally serving 36 years in the U.S. House of 
Representatives, matching his brother’s time 
in the Senate. “Sandy was always my hero,
” 
Sen. Levin told this writer earlier this year; 
the brothers remained close all their lives. 
Following high school, the future sena-

Carl Levin, the people’s advocate who confronted the powerful.
A Lifetime of Service

JACK LESSENBERRY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

THE PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

SEN. CARL LEVIN (1934-2021)

From
Detroit to D.C.

