Letters, Legacies, and the Work That Endures: A Generational Zionist Journey
I grew up vaguely aware that my great-grandfather, Dr. Harris J. Levine, was involved in Zionist causes. His name would surface in family conversations, a distant figure tethered to a different era. But it wasn’t until my grandparents passed away and I found myself helping clear out their home that his world and mine truly collided.
There, in dusty boxes and faded folders, we unearthed letters from prime ministers, movement leaders, governors, and everyday people whose lives he touched. Notes of gratitude for his work with the Jewish National Fund, American Friends of Magen David Adom, and countless other Zionist initiatives. I held these papers in my hands and realized the quiet weight of a legacy I had inherited without ever truly knowing it. Each one, a thoughtful testament to the life of a man I had known only as a name on my family tree. A man whose fight for a Jewish homeland shaped history, and unbeknownst to me, shaped my life too.
Dr. Harris J. Levine was a physician by profession and a Zionist activist by calling. Born in an era when the dream of a Jewish state was little more than an idea whispered in synagogues and meeting halls, he committed himself to the cause as both a leader and a believer. His 1913 bar mitzvah speech spoke of the dream for a Jewish homeland, a vision that would guide his activism for the rest of his life.
Throughout the State of Israel’s formative years, he served as a pillar in American Zionist circles. He chaired committees, corresponded with statesmen, and helped mobilize resources for the nascent Jewish state. He was so deeply respected that Golda Meir herself called him a close friend, crediting him as “among the outstanding stalwarts in the American Zionist movement.”
He worked tirelessly not for personal recognition but because he believed in a moral imperative to secure a homeland for the Jewish people. While he passed away in 1976, his letters and legacy stayed tucked away until fate placed them in my hands.
For me, activism wasn’t an inheritance, at least not one I recognized at the time. I always joke that I stumbled into this world, but when I did, it felt like slipping into a space I had always been meant to occupy. The real spark came during a high school trip to Poland and Israel. It was my first time in both places, but it felt like I was returning somewhere familiar. That trip shifted everything: my college choice, my community, my career. It led me to Hillel, to a year teaching English in Netanya, and to the mentorship of Jewish leaders who showed me that activism could be a profession. It could be a life.
Since then, I’ve worked in campus Jewish life, with alumni activist networks, and with policy-minded organizations advocating for a just and secure Israel. I’ve stood on stages and in living rooms, building bridges, challenging narratives, and trying to keep alive the dream my great-grandfather fought for.
The moment that most crystallized the l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, connection for me was at a community conversation I organized for young Jewish professionals committed to Israel’s future. We were discussing the difficult, often messy work of advocating for an Israel that remains both Jewish and democratic, one that lives up to the promise envisioned by its founders.
As voices filled the room, debating, grieving, hoping, I realized that this was the natural evolution of the work my great-grandfather had started. He had fought to build a state; we were fighting to preserve its soul.
At that moment, I felt him with me as more than a ghost from family lore. He became a living presence in the work we were doing and in the conversations we were having. It made me realize that activism isn’t just a political act; it’s an act of memory, of honoring the past by fighting for a future worthy of it.
The older I get, and the more I understand the footsteps I’m walking in, the more impossible it is to separate his story from my own. Every time I lead a hard conversation about Israel’s future, every time I fight for Jewish students to feel safe and proud on campus, I feel him with me. If he fought to build the state, I see my role as fighting to preserve its moral and democratic soul, the Israel he spoke of in his 1913 bar mitzvah speech, a place of justice, safety, and hope for the Jewish people.
Today, as antisemitism rises and conversations around Israel grow increasingly polarized, it’s easy to feel discouraged. The headlines are relentless. The vitriol is exhausting. And the stakes feel impossibly high.
Now more than ever, I think about my great-grandfather. About what it must have been like to advocate for a Jewish state before one existed, to believe in something before it was tangible. If he could find the courage to persist in those dark and uncertain days, then I owe it to him, and to myself, to do the same.
I am not fighting the same battles he fought. The world is different now. The threats have changed, and so have the conversations. However, the moral core of the work remains the same: to secure safety, dignity, and hope for the Jewish people, and to build a world where we can be both proud of who we are and actively responsible for one another.
If I could sit across from my great-grandfather now, I don’t think I’d say much. I’d want to listen. I’d want to hear about the meetings he attended, the moments when it felt hopeless, and what kept him going. I’d want to ask about David Ben-Gurion and his other friends and colleagues, about what made them laugh, what kept them up at night, and whether they ever doubted what they were doing.
And when it was my turn to speak, I’d say thank you. Thank you for fighting for a world you’d never fully live to see, so that I could be born into it. Thank you for believing in an impossible dream and passing it down, quietly, in boxes of letters and brittle papers. I hope I’m doing you proud. And I hope I’ll leave enough of a footprint that one day, when someone stumbles across my papers, they’ll feel the same flicker of connection that I feel with you.
