About Alex Levin            Alex Levin     List of honorees         Louis Rose Society         Jewishsightseeing home

A Tribute to Alex Levin, My Father

By Charles Levin
March 14, 2006

Alex Levin was a man of extraordinary courage, profound intellect, and clever wit whose pursuits included a lifelong love of classical music, especially opera, and  insatiable reading.  He battled two separate cancers in his later years, spending the last 19 years of his life as a laryngectomee and the last 9 years of his life enduring chemotherapy treatments as treatment for lymphoma.  Yet, he demonstrated remarkable self discipline in keeping active and continuing his devotion to his many intellectual pursuits.

He never stopped exploring his roots in Judaism.  The third of five children born into an Orthodox Jewish home, the first to be born in the United States after his parents and two older siblings had emigrated from Russia.  He moved away from Orthodoxy eventually gravitated to the Humanistic Judaism movement . He found its combination of Judaism and humanism to be representative of his evolved set of beliefs.   With his wife Shirley, they hosted the first meetings of the  Humanistic Jewish Congregation of San Diego in their living room in 1983.  He was the driving force in the founding and initial building of the congregation, and remained so as long as his health permitted.  He died in 1987, leaving behind a congregation that had established its roots and was growing.

Levin resides in Wayland, Massachusetts