Naomi Levine, who in the 1970s as executive director of the American Jewish Congress became the first woman to head a large Jewish advocacy group and who later played a key role in New York University’s transformative expansion into a high-profile institution, died on January 1 14 at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida. She was 97 years old.
The death was confirmed by her daughter, Joan Kiddon.
Ms. Levine, who grew up in the Bronx in the 1930s, initially aspired to become a teacher in a public school. But as she said, after an oral exam she was turned down for having a lisp and choosing to pursue the law instead. She attended Columbia Law School, which soon included prominent women such as pioneering feminist politician Bella Abzug, labor attorney Judith Vladeck, and federal judge Constance Baker Motley among fellow students in the 1940s.
In the 1950s, Ms. Levine joined the American Jewish Congress as an attorney on the Law and Social Action Commission. There, often in collaboration with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she wrote pleadings on key Supreme Court cases, including Brown v Board of Education, which reduced segregation in public schools, and Sweatt v Painter, who declared the “segregated but equal “successfully questioned doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.
In 1963 Ms. Levine helped Rabbi Joachim Prinz write “The Issue is Silence”, a speech that expressed his solidarity with the civil rights movement and which he gave shortly before the famous “I Have a Dream” by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered speech at the March in Washington. She later taught a law and racial relations class in policing at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
During her lawyer career, Ms. Levine was often surrounded by men. “I knew I deserved to be there because I was so smart and often smarter than everyone else in the room,” she once said. “And if I shut up I could do a lot.”
In 1972 Ms. Levine was named executive director of the American Jewish Congress, a position that brought her visibility and influence. In an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, she reflected on the women’s movement and the balance of responsibilities between spouses.
“I still feel a little guilty about being away from home too much, and if my daughter got sick, I would stay home and take care of her – I wouldn’t expect my husband to,” said you. “Young girls think differently today and they are right.”
She summarized her view as follows: “Women’s library is probably right, but it’s not my style.”
In 1978 Ms. Levine left the American Jewish Congress and, eager for a new challenge, accepted a position at NYU. She was hired to help the troubled institution realize its ambitions of becoming a top university.
At the time, NYU was not the respected academic institution it is today. It was poorly furnished and, with its crumbling campus buildings and drab dormitories, was difficult to attract students. Ms. Levine began leading the university’s indictment toward change as the principal fundraiser, and she quickly found herself gifted at the strategic art of raising money.
She raised more than $ 2 billion over the course of two decades. Towards the end of her tenure, she raised around $ 300 million a year. In 1985 she launched an unprecedented $ 1 billion fundraiser that earned her some skepticism. However, when the feat was accomplished a decade later, the initiative was hailed as one of the most ambitious such endeavors in higher education.
By the beginning of the 21st century, NYU had reinvented itself and its expansion through Lower Manhattan continued to accelerate. A 2001 New York Times article headlined Ms. Levine, who was then senior vice president, “The Dynamo At The Heart Of The NYU Fundraiser”; The article noted that the phrase “Clear it with Naomi” had become commonplace in university administration.
“It is impossible to exaggerate Naomi’s contribution to transforming NYU,” said John Sexton, the university’s president from 2002 to 2015, in a telephone interview. “Anyone who knows the generative forces that took NYU from its nadir, which is at the beginning of its arrival, to its booth in 2000 and beyond, knows that it was one of the main generators of those forces.”
After retiring as the university’s principal fundraiser, Ms. Levine founded the George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at NYU, where she also taught a graduate course on Ethics, Law, and Corporate Governance in Nonprofits. ”She retired in 2004.
Ms. Levine’s commitment to social issues remained a career breakthrough, perhaps most personally expressed at Camp Greylock, the summer camp for girls in the Adirondacks, which she ran from 1955 to 1971.
A mail boat would bring copies of the New York Times to the warehouse, and Ms. Levine moderated current affairs discussions with campers in a dining room. She reluctantly closed the camp to concentrate on her work at the American Jewish Congress. Many campers who still proudly call themselves “Greylock Girls” have grown into leading companies in the fields of law, business and medicine.
“Regardless of age, she wanted these girls to know that they can and can be anything,” said Ms. Kiddon, her daughter. “She believed she could empower these girls for life.”
Naomi Ruth Bronheim was born in the Bronx on April 15, 1923. Her father Nathan was a salesman. Her mother, Malvina (Mermelstein) Bronheim, was a hospital secretary. When Naomi was a girl, she helped prepare a pot of flank cholent stew on Friday night to prepare for the Sabbath, and her mother sewed clothes for the family.
Naomi attended Hunter College High School and graduated from Hunter College with a BA before enrolling at Columbia Law School, where she became the editor of the Law Review. In 1948 she married Leonard Levine, an accountant who had fought in Normandy in the third wave; He died in 2001.
In addition to her daughter, two granddaughters and one great-granddaughter survived Mrs. Levine.
After Ms. Levine retired, she was awarded a presidential medal by NYU in 2005. She remained on the board of directors of the school’s Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life and also advised the Taub Center for Israel Studies.
A few years ago, Ms. Levine moved to West Palm Beach where she began writing a memoir called History and Me. She also founded a book and film club at the Kravis Center (which her daughter referred to as “Lincoln Center for West Palm Beach”), where members discussed social issues. After seeing “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) they talked about racism in America; After Adam’s Rib (1942) they shared their views on sexism and gender inequality.
Ms. Levine hoped to show the 1933 film version of Little Women one day. In 2016, she told the Palm Beach Daily News that Katharine Hepburn’s idiosyncratic portrayal of the main character, Jo March, inspired her when she saw the film as a girl.
“She wanted to break free of being an ordinary woman,” said Ms. Levine. “That influenced my thinking.”
