BEHIND THE HEADLINES Lautenberg’s retirement seen as ‘great loss’ for Jews

New Jersey Jewish News
WHIPPANY, N.J., Feb. 23 (JTA) — For the last year, Frank Lautenberg has been dropping clues, but not answering the Big Question: Would he run for a fourth term in the U.S. Senate? In November, while Lautenberg was on a visit to Poland, New Jersey newspapers reported that he was, in fact, running again, a message the senator also conveyed to several wealthy supporters who met him a few days later in Jerusalem during the General Assembly of the UJA-Federations of North America. But when January 1999 passed and he didn”t make calls to top Jewish Democratic fund raisers in the state, insiders concluded that the 75-year-old Lautenberg was set to retire. Best known to the rest of the world as the senior U.S. senator from New Jersey, Lautenberg is considered by Jews an activist who came up through the ranks of – – and maintained his ties with — the Jewish community. Lautenberg, who announced his Senate retirement on Feb. 18, actively embraced Judaism and Jewish causes late in life. He was 40 when he joined a synagogue, 43 when he made his first contribution to the United Jewish Appeal and 45 when he first visited Israel. He never had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. But Lautenberg has managed to compress an extraordinary amount of service to the Jewish community — as an activist and a senator — into the later years of his life. Once he got started, Lautenberg took to Jewish causes with zeal, taking the lead, for example, in writing and pushing through a 1990 bill that requires immigration officials to take into account historical context when judging an applicant”s refugee status. The result — the Lautenberg amendment — has allowed a larger number of Jews from the former Soviet Union to gain entry into the United States. “The Lautenberg amendment will be one of his most enduring legacies,” says Leonard Glickman, executive vice president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. “It is a critical piece of legislation that will help facilitate the adjudication of Jewish and other refugees from the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Calling Lautenberg”s retirement “a huge loss for human rights,” Mark Talisman, former director of the Council of Jewish Federations” Washington Action Office, says Lautenberg played a major role in Soviet Jewish immigration, beyond the effects of the Lautenberg amendment. “He”s not a guy to brag about this, but in regard to the immigration of Soviet Jewry and oppressed minorities, he was one of the central players in the Senate,” says Talisman, who is now a Washington consultant. Lautenberg was not only one of the first Jews elected to the Senate with such strong local community ties, he was the first Jew ever elected statewide in New Jersey. “He was a wonderful senator for New Jersey and a wonderful champion for the Jews,” says Murray Laulicht of West Orange, president of the United Jewish Federation of MetroWest, the community in which Lautenberg was active as a philanthropist. “It”s a great loss.” Lautenberg became interested in Jewish life for several reasons, including his parents” roots as immigrant. He married Lois Levinson in 1957 and has four children. Lois wanted to rear the family in a Jewish home, and Lautenberg, too, became concerned about imparting Jewish values and culture to his children. In 1969, he visited Israel for the first time and was deeply moved by the life-and-death struggles of the Jewish state. When the family moved from Wayne to Montclair in the late 1960s, Lautenberg began organizing the uninvolved Jews of his town. Lautenberg now lives in Cliffside Park in Bergen County. He and his wife divorced last year; his children are grown and scattered throughout the country. He has six grandchildren. In 1971, Lautenberg was selected as one of three co-chairs of the advanced gifts division of UJA of Essex County. He rose quickly through the ranks of the Jewish communal world. In 1974, at the age of 50, he became general chair of national UJA, the youngest to ever hold the title. He assumed the office right after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. “When Frank assumed the national chairmanship of the United Jewish Appeal, the organization was under great stress. There was a void of leadership. Frank took the reins and, typical of his leadership style, put the national UJA effort on a very positive track,” recalls Jerry Waldor, a former president of the MetroWest federation. Lautenberg told the New Jersey Jewish News last week that concern for Israel fueled his desire to lead UJA. “It wasn”t an office I sought. I accepted it because I cared so much about Israel.” At various times, Lautenberg served on the national board of the American Jewish Committee, was a member of the board of governors of Hebrew University and president of the American Friends of the Hebrew University. He also served on the board of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and was a member of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Israel. In between all the philanthropy and community activism, Lautenberg found time to build a business with two boyhood friends, Henry and Joe Taub, who were starting a payroll tabulation service called Automatic Payrolls, Inc. The three founded Automated Data Processing, or ADP, which assumed its new name in 1961 when it offered its first public stock. The company made Lautenberg a millionaire. Using his own funds, Lautenberg came from behind to win a Senate seat in 1982, at the age of 58, against popular Republican congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, who was 72 at the time. Lautenberg says UJA made it easier for him to make the jump to the Senate. “UJA was a significant factor in my decision to run. I got a lot of exposure from being involved with an organization that spreads its reach across continents. I enjoyed it.” The 1982 victory sealed Lautenberg”s ascension as a kind of de facto leader of New Jersey Jewry. Although this has at times been seen as a double-edged sword — Lautenberg was, after all, a senator for all the citizens of New Jersey — there was no gainsaying the political foothold he had secured in the Jewish community. “He”s our kind of hero,” says Dennis Klein of East Hanover, N.J., board member of the National Jewish Democratic Council and newly elected president of the New Jersey region of American Jewish Congress. “How many Jews from our community become senators?” That unusual quality wasn”t lost on Washington observers, either. “That he could run and be elected was very gratifying for me,” recalls Hyman Bookbinder, retired Washington representative for the AJCommittee. “At that time there were not many Jewish senators. Now there are 11 in the Senate. So even if he leaves, we still have a minyan.” What initially struck Bookbinder was Lautenberg”s insider status in the Jewish community. “He was not only a Jewish senator, but also a Jewish citizen who had been so active in Jewish community,” he says. “It”s the end of an era, a changing of the guard,” says Ira Foreman, director of the Washington-based National Jewish Democratic Council. When Lautenberg and Howard Metzenbaum — who served for many years as a U.S. senator from Ohio — were elected, it represented a “sea change,” Foreman recalls. Unlike other Jews already in the Senate, Lautenberg and Metzenbaum “came out of Jewish communal life.” What surprised Foreman at the time, he remembers, is that this fact “never hurt them. It represented a shift. Frank represented the maturing of American Jewry and its acceptance in society.” In Washington, Lautenberg was frustrated by his first term in office, not used to the labyrinth of Senate politics and, after being in the top spot at ADP, his low rank as a junior senator. But he learned quickly, gaining the reputation for being a doer. Members of Jewish groups who worked with him say he was always responsive to their concerns. “His commitment really transcends politics,” says Kenneth Bricker, a spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “He was involved in these issues before he was a senator, and he institutionalized them once he came into the Senate. He has a very strong, very pro-Israel record.” For Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Lautenberg “represented the best of Jewish values.” One project Saperstein worked on directly with Lautenberg was a 1986 piece of legislation permitting observant Jewish soldiers in the American military to wear kipot. Lautenberg has also been a strong supporter of Israel and the peace process. Last October, in a letter to President Bill Clinton, he urged him to support victims of terrorist attacks by allowing them to seek financial damages in the United States. He cited the case of Stephen and Roz Flatow of West Orange, N.J., whose daughter Alisa was killed in a 1995 terrorist bus bombing while she was studying in Israel. He has championed the family”s cause — attaching Iranian assets frozen in this country — since they won a judgment that found Iran culpable. Lautenberg brokered meetings for the Flatows with Clinton, and before that, with Clinton”s national security adviser, Sandy Berger. “My family is saddened,” Stephen Flatow said. “On a personal level, he gave us tremendous assistance, not just legislatively, but personally as well. He was a source of strength and comfort to us.” Lautenberg also had a great interest in the environment, transportation, education and health care. He is widely known as the author of legislation that banned smoking on airplanes. Thinking of the future was David Steiner of West Orange, also an important Democratic Party backer, who supported Lautenberg during his three campaigns. “He was a real stand-up guy and he”ll be sorely missed in the community,” Steiner says. “He was a staunch ally and a friend of Israel. I hope we can develop people like him in the future.””