Where What When

A Lawyer, a Legend - An Interview with Nathan Lewin

Nathan Lewin, the dean of American Orthodox attorneys, is also one of the most prominent attorneys in the United States. He has defended clients as diverse as Richard Nixon, Meir Kahane, the Lubavitcher rebbe, former attorney general Edwin Meese, actress Jodie Foster, and Sholom Rubashkin, yet Mr. Lewin sees himself primarily as a defender of freedom of religion - or, more accurately, a defender of the rights of the Jewish community and individuals in it. A pioneer in Jewish public interest litigation, he has argued 27 cases in the Supreme Court, many of them on Jewish issues.

In the 1980s, for example, he argued the case of Simcha Goldman, who worked for an Air Force hospital that would not let him wear his yarmulke. The Supreme Court ruled against Simcha Goldman in a 5-4 decision, but Mr. Lewin was subsequently instrumental in having Congress pass legislation allowing yarmulkes in the military.

Another of Mr. Lewin's many achievements for the Jewish people is a law Congress passed the 1970s allowing employees of the federal government to work extra hours before or after yamim tovim, so they do not have to use all their vacation time for them. A Congressman from Brooklyn, Steven Solarz, asked Mr. Lewin to help him with this bill. After Solarz had introduced the bill in Congress, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which reviews each bill introduced in Congress, decided that the bill was unconstitutional, and held a meeting with Congressman Solarz and over 40 others. Solarz asked Lewin to come with him. At the meeting, after the head of the Office of Legal Counsel finished what he had to say, it was Congressman Solarz's turn to speak. He turned the table over to Lewin.

Mr. Lewin told the story of his clerkship with Justice Harlan. Every Friday afternoon, Justice Harlan would say to Lewin, "Looks like the sun is going down, you'd better start heading home," and Justice Harlan would let Nat out early, and allow him to work on Sundays instead. Lewin simply said to the audience, "Do you think Justice Harlan thought he was violating the Constitution?" The room went absolutely silent. Shortly thereafter, the Office of Legal Counsel called Congressman Solarz and told him they had changed their position and would support the bill.

Mr. Lewin is also the author of New York's original "get law." In the early 1980s, the Agudah's Rabbi Moshe Sherer called a meeting of Jewish leaders to brainstorm about the increasing problem of husbands who left their wives without giving them a get, a Jewish divorce. The idea that emerged from the meeting was that, by not giving a get, the husband was creating a "barrier to remarriage" for the wife. This was a concept that would be recognized by secular civil law. After the bill was drafted and submitted, Rabbi Sherer got a call from the office of New York's governor, saying that his staff had reviewed the bill and could not sign it because it was unconstitutional. Rabbi Sherer immediately wrote to Lewin. Mr. Lewin rewrote the entire bill on his own, and personally met with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to argue for it. Governor Cuomo signed the bill into law.

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Mr. Lewin comes from a prominent family in Poland. His grandfather was a rav near Cracow and one of the founders of Agudath Israel. He was also a member of the Sejm, the Polish parliament. Lewin's father worked in his father-in-law's Lodz mills, and was elected the youngest member of the city council. Nat was born in Lodz in 1936. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, his parents fled with him through the woods across the border to Vilna, in Lithuania.

Mr. Lewin describes how his mother "had a lot of foresight and saw that staying in Vilna was not going to be good." In retrospect, that is quite an understatement. His mother, a former Dutch citizen, went to the Dutch consulate in Kovno, Lithuania, and received a third-destination visa to Curaçao, the Dutch island in the Caribbean. With this third-destination visa in hand, she then went to the Japanese consulate and received visas for Japan. She was the first person to receive this visa, and went back to the community and told others. Ultimately, the head of the Japanese consulate, Chiune Sugihara issued this transit visa to 6,000 Jews in Lithuania, saving their lives. Some of them were the members of the Mir Yeshiva, which famously went to Japanese-controlled Shanghai.

Lewin and his parents traveled by train for 14 days to Vladivostok, a city on the east coast of Russia, and from there to Japan by boat. Of the over 200,000 Jews who remained in Lithuania, as of January, 1941, the majority were rounded up and shot by the Germans or shipped off to concentration camps.

After the war, the Lewins came to New York City and lived on the Upper West Side. Mr. Lewin attended high school and college at Yeshiva University, and was valedictorian of YU's class of 1957. Several YU graduates had attended Yale Law School, in New Haven, Connecticut, so when Mr. Lewin decided he wanted to go to law school, that's where he wanted to go. Then, at Mr. Lewin's YU graduation, the father of one of his friends, who was a lawyer, approached him. Mr. Lewin describes the encounter like this: "He came up to me and said, `Nathan, you've done so well. What are you going to do now?' And I said, `Well, I'm going to law school.' He said, `That's very nice. What law school are you going to?' And I said, `I'm going to Yale.' He looked at me and said, `Well, that's very good. It's too bad you were not admitted to Harvard.' And I looked at him and said, `I was admitted to Harvard. As a matter of fact, Harvard agreed to give me a full scholarship, and Yale is half-loan and half-grant.' And he said to me - and I still remember these words - `Nathan, if you were admitted to Harvard Law School, and you don't go to Harvard Law School, you are crazy!"

"Well, what was I to do with that?" Lewin thought. He went home and told his father about this conversation. His father responded, "I already sent a check to Yale; I'm going to have to send another check to Harvard?" Lewin's father wrote out another check, and he began Harvard Law.

Lewin did extremely well in Harvard, making it on to the Harvard Law Review, an honor that at the time was reserved for the 25 students with the best grades, out of a class of 500. Yet, during his second year of law school, when he applied for summer positions at the big law firms in New York, he did not receive a single job offer. At every firm, they asked him if he was shomer Shabbos, and when he said he was, each firm told him that they would not hire someone who would not work on Saturdays. This was 1958 and 1959, and prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was legal not to hire someone because of their race or religion.

Lewin was devastated, and that summer he worked for one of his professors at Harvard, Professor Benjamin Kaplan. After graduating from Harvard, he spent a year clerking for Judge Edward Lumbard on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. It was not until two years later that Lewin found that he was rewarded for his refusal to work on Shabbos. One day, Lewin received a phone call from a professor at Harvard Law whom he did not know. The professor explained that Professor Kaplan had spoken very highly of Lewin's work, and that each year, Justice John Harlan on the Supreme Court would hire one of his two clerks based on this professor's recommendation. The professor asked Lewin if he would be interested in clerking the next year for Justice Harlan. Lewin said, "Of course!" Clerking for a Justice of the Supreme Court is the most prestigious post-law school position in the United States, and immediately catapults one to the very top on the legal profession, beyond what one would achieve as one of many lawyers at a large firm in New York.

After clerking for Justice Harlan, Lewin went on to work in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. At the time the Criminal Division was led by Assistant Attorney General Jack Miller, under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. A month into this position, Lewin was assigned to the team in Nashville that was prosecuting the infamous president of the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa.

Lewin then went to work for the Office of the Solicitor General, the office that represents the U.S. government in cases before the Supreme Court. During the time Lewin was at the Solicitor General's Office, Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court, became the head of that office. When Lewin introduced himself to Thurgood Marshall and started to mention that he was an observant Jew, Marshall interrupted and said, "Yeah, I know all about that; I grew up in Baltimore!" Marshall explained that while growing up he was a "Shabbos goy" for his Baltimore neighbors. While at the Solicitor General's Office, Lewin personally argued 12 cases in the Supreme Court.

In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed his Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach as Undersecretary of State, and Katzenbach asked Lewin to come work for him at the State Department. In June, 1967, when the Six Day War broke out, President Johnson personally ordered that for the sake of safety, U.S. passports would be invalid throughout the entire Middle East, including in Eretz Yisrael. Because the U.S. Passport Office was one of the divisions of the State Department under Lewin, he was able, with the green light from Katzenbach, to grant special visas for people who wanted to travel to Eretz Yisrael during this time. President Johnson finally lifted the ban on Middle East travel two weeks after the Six Day War was over.

After leaving the State Department, Lewin worked for a short time in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Then one day Lewin got a call from his former boss in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Jack Miller. Miller asked Lewin if he would be interested in leaving the government and becoming part of a new law firm. Lewin accepted and joined the Washington, D.C. law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larocca and Lewin, a firm that specialized in white-collar criminal defense.

Today, Lewin and his wife live in Potomac, Maryland, where they have been for the past 30 years. They have two daughters, one of whom is an attorney and a partner with her father at their firm, Lewin and Lewin, in downtown Washington, D.C. These stories are only the tip of the iceberg of the work that Mr. Lewin has done for the Jewish community over the course of his career. Lewin has been saying for years that many of us don't realize how fortunate we are today, that law firms are filled with attorneys wearing yarmulkas, and that he hopes more attorneys will appreciate the opportunity they have and pursue careers in litigation, so that they will be able to continue to fight in court for Jewish causes. He graciously agreed to answer some questions for the Where What When.

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Elie Zirkind: As someone who has been in the field of white-collar criminal defense for the past 40 years, what do you think about the many recent scandals involving members of the frum community? What can we do to rid our community of all this crime?

Nat Lewin: They're very troubling, obviously. During the Nine Days, in Boro Park, the Agudah runs a symposium about how you're supposed to abide by the law. I spoke at the program a couple years ago. This year they had the Spinka Rebbe speak. It's very important to get the message across to the frum community that they are responsible not only in terms of themselves and their immediate families to avoid getting themselves into positions where they violate the law, but that it's also always a chilul Hashem when they do.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can rid the community of such behavior. People are human beings, and as human beings they make mistakes. In my field of law, I have seen many people who are otherwise very dedicated to their community, their religion, and their family, but who have human temptations and made mistakes. We have to keep reminding people that this is something that has very grave consequences, both to the individual and to the community. That's the best you can do. I don't know if there's any other way one can stop it.

EZ: What was your role in defending Sholom Rubashkin, and why did you agree to take his case?

NL: I am not representing Rubashkin any longer. I represented Rubashkin and Agriprocessors in a number of legal matters prior to the matter that is presently pending. I represented him in connection with the allegations that PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, suddenly made after they put somebody in the plant undercover - in what I thought was illegal trespass onto the premises - and took pictures of what was going on in the meat plant.

I have to say, unfortunately, that I thought the Orthodox community, including the Orthodox Union, did not sufficiently come to Rubashkin's defense at that point, and that, I think, is what began the whole slide down for Agriprocessors. I think Rubashkin and Agriprocessors did an amazing job for the Jewish community, and were entitled to the support of the Jewish community. They were disappointed that they did not receive that support. The Jewish Forward even began a series of articles, many of which were filled with misrepresentations, lies, and false statements against Rubashkin.

As far as the current matter, regarding Agriprocessors having employed illegal aliens, it was a well-known fact that Agriprocessors employed illegal aliens - as does every other meat packing plant in the United States. It's a perfect job for illegal aliens, who don't know English and are willing to work in Iowa, in freezing temperatures, dragging around dead animals. Most Americans are not ready to do that. I will say definitively, from everything I saw, that Rubashkin treated his employees better than the employees are treated at all the major slaughterhouses in the United States. They were paid better and treated more humanely.

The Forward, for its own reasons, decided they were going to write exposes about Rubashkin's employees. These exposes were false and were based on statements made by selected employees who had grievances. The result was that many Jews accepted what The Forward said, and then came the immigration raid. Federal officials decided to raid the plant, even though they did not do so for any other slaughterhouse.

Now the interesting thing is that, under the Obama administration, immigration officials have now changed their policy and are no longer raiding plants. They have decided to simply to talk employers to get them to fire their illegal employees. This was something Rubashkin was always prepared to do. Was Rubashkin's system perfect? No. Many of his employees provided false papers.

Rubashkin is now being represented by local lawyers from Iowa. I hope he wins his case; he is entitled to win it.

EZ: What are your criteria for accepting cases on behalf of the Jewish community? Would you even represent someone who committed a very heinous crime?

NL: It is not the job of a defense lawyer to be the jury. I don't have to believe someone when they come in. What I can do is give someone my best advice as to whether his story is credible. Under the American system, and under the standards that I use, I try to do the best thing for my client within the framework of what I'm permitted to do as a lawyer. You can't allow your client to deliberately lie. On the other hand, you can make every effort to persuade the prosecution that they have a bad case. You can make every effort to persuade a jury that a case is no good. That's the system. So do I have to believe someone in order to take him as a client? No.

EZ: What were some of your most memorable cases?

NL: One was the case I won against an organization called the Holyland Foundation, for the family of a man who was killed by Hamas terrorists in Israel in 1996. This was the first case in the United States against an organization that funded terrorists. We have not yet recovered any money, because the Holyland Foundation's money was seized by the United States government, but we did win a judgment of $156 million.

Another was the case in which I represented Lubavitch in recovering the library that belonged to the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson, which was brought over after the Second World War and was held in the basement of 770 Eastern Parkway. The dispute arose over whether that was the Rebbe's personal library, so that it belonged to his family, or if it was the library of the Lubavitch community. The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, said it belonged to the community.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson's wife had a sister, whose son, Rabbi Barry Gurary, would have been the next Lubavitcher Rebbe, after Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, had he so chosen, because he was the only male descendant of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson. He began taking books from this library. We had a full trial, and we won, so that was a memorable case.

I'm also the only person ever to have represented a sitting Attorney General while he was the target of a criminal investigation. This was when I represented Ed Meese. I also represented President Richard Nixon after he resigned, when Congress passed a law just for the purpose of taking President Nixon's papers. I also represented John Lennon on the question of whether he would be excluded from the United States because of a narcotics conviction he had in England. Beatles fans in the United States were very thankful after we won.

Of course, there are all my Jewish cases, including the yarmulke case, the menora cases, and the case in which I represented Satmar and Kiryas Joel. So there have been a number of memorable cases.

EZ: How is the workplace different today than from what you experienced, and how is the environment different today for a frum person going to college?

NL: The workplace is totally different. When I got out of law school, no law firm in New York was ready to hire a shomer Shabbos lawyer. Every law firm, when they saw on my resume that I went to college at Yeshiva University, asked, "Are you a Sabbath observer?" Today they're not allowed to ask that, but then they were. Today, not only are there lawyers wearing yarmulkas at the big law firms in New York; they are also on the management committees. At some firms, they even have daf yomi. So the workplace is totally different.

College is also different. When I went to Harvard Law School, they had classes six days a week, including Saturdays. The dean thought he was being kind to the Sabbath observers when he said there would only be one class we had to take on Saturday, and we had to just sit in the back of the class without taking notes. Now schools are much more receptive to Jewish observance.

EZ: How are young frum people who go to law school today different than at the time that you went?

NL: One difference, which disappoints me, is that when many frum people go to law school today, they view it as just an entry to a good parnassa. They go and become tax lawyers, real estate lawyers, and trusts and estates lawyers. None of them seem to be interested in doing Jewish public interest work. I have a hard time finding the people who, when I'm gone, will be doing the kinds of things I've been doing.

EZ: What are the biggest problems facing the American Orthodox Jewish community today?

NL: The biggest problem is the cost of Jewish education. Sending our children to a Jewish day school is essential. The costs have gone so high that people are beginning to opt out because they can't afford to send their children to a Jewish day school. So some solution must be found.

The other problem that faces American Orthodoxy is the treatment of Orthodox Jewish women. We have an increasingly educated mass of Orthodox Jewish women who learn and want to learn, and the question is what is going to be done for them to enable them to achieve some close approximation of the successes that women have achieved outside Orthodox Jewish society. The frustration of very bright Jewish women is a serious problem, and that's got to be resolved.

EZ: You've said before that the only full solution you see to the tuition problem is for the Supreme Court to overturn its decision from 1971 in the case Lemon v. Kurtzman, in which the Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for states to reimburse nonpublic schools for teachers' salaries or textbooks. However, there is a great deal of support both among the general public and on the Supreme Court for that decision.

NL: That's true, but an effort still has to be made to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn that case.

EZ: Thank you for speaking with the Where What When.

Nathan Lewin is an attorney in Washington, D.C. and a leading advocate for Jewish causes. Elie Zirkind is an attorney in Baltimore.

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Article List - November 2009