Steven Levin, a Chicago attorney who has made his mark in the areas of personal injury and medical malpractice, no longer wished to defer a dream he'd held for decades: teaching in Israel.
One of his mentors during his undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison- George Mosse, a German Jew and a preeminent authority on the rise of Hitler and Fascism-had the opportunity to teach for a semester at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Levin soaked up Mosse's stories about his time in Jerusalem. As he approached his 70th birthday, Levin, a stalwart supporter of the Jewish State, wanted to follow in his professor's footsteps.
A few years ago, he shared his dream with friend, fellow Chicagoan, and legal colleague Daniel Schlessinger, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University. Schlessinger, who has worked in business litigation for more than four decades, said he "would make a few calls."
The upshot of these calls was a two-week minicourse in the American jury system the two lawyers taught on the university's Mount Scopus campus this past spring. The class, they said, was as eye-opening for them as for their 55 students, who had little to no exposure to juries, since court decisions in Israel are all handed down by professional judges.
Schlessinger and Levin said that the students, who study law as undergraduates (another deviation from the American legal structure), were intrigued that major court cases can be determined by a panel of one's peers. In their final exam, they were asked by their instructors to make a case for either the American or Israeli judicial structure, and most opted for the jury system.
"I was very impressed by the quality of their responses," said Schlessinger. Levin concurred. Many of the "exams we received were deeply sophisticated," he said.
Levin added that he was also "deeply moved" by the "commitment that the Israeli students have to make" to attend university, often balancing active military duty and family responsibilities with a serious dedication to their studies. Indeed, about half of their students attended the class remotely, as they had been called up for army service.
Unlike Skokie-raised Levin, whose love of Israel was nurtured by Mosse and Jewish writers, including Herman Wouk, Schlessinger said that his Zionist roots can be traced directly to his family background.
Schlessinger's late father, Dr. Nathan Schlessinger, a Polish-born psychoanalyst, and his late mother, Alice Wiley Schlessinger, who came from a Cincinnati German Jewish family, met at a Zionist study group at the University of Cincinnati as medical and undergraduate students, respectively. While raising Schlessinger and his siblings in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, they were active in Kehilat Anshei Ma-arav (KAM), now KAM Isaiah Israel, where his mother eventually became principal of the religious school. When it came time for college, Schlessinger, imbued with a love of Judaism, chose Brandeis University. He spent his junior year at the Hebrew University, which became the start of his lifelong relationship with the school.
Following law school, Schlessinger returned to Hyde Park, where he and his wife, Marcy, raised four daughters. Around 2000, while President of KAM Isaiah Israel, he was approached by a fellow congregant about becoming active in American Friends of the Hebrew University. He jumped at the opportunity and eventually worked his way up the ranks of various boards to his current post.
Levin and Schlessinger agreed that their most recent experience at the Hebrew University reinforced their strong feelings for Israel and the Jewish people.
Being on the campus of a university that was co-founded by Albert Einstein, and at which Sigmund Freud and Martin Buber served on the Board of Governors, said Levin, was "spiritual nourishment. …I couldn't get enough of the brain power. It made me extremely proud."
Robert Nagler Miller is a journalist and editor who writes frequently about arts- and Jewish-related topics from his home in New York.
