Mrs. Levin received her R.N. degree from Beth Israel School of Nursing in New York City. For 17 years, she nursed in several hospital labor, delivery and nursery wards. She later assisted in an orthopedic surgeon’s office and was floor nurse in a hospital psychiatric unit. Following her nursing career, she served as a volunteer for the American Red Cross. She earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Utah State University in 1960.

Mrs. Levin was preceded in death by her husband, Marshall D. Levin, and her son, Scott. Survivors include her two sons Joel Levin and David Levin of Derwood, Md.; and four grandchildren.

Graveside services were held in the Temple Emanu-El section of Evergreen Cemetery with Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon officiating.

Memorial contributions may be made to a charity of your choice.

Mitch Dorson

Mitch Dorson, 63, died unexpectedly on May 13, 2012. “His life was a story about a man standing for his principles,” says Rabbi Joseph Weizenbaum, who worked with Mr. Dorson at Temple Emanu-El. “He never backed off” of those principles teaching social studies, first at Catalina Foothills High School for 10 years, then at Green Fields Country Day School since 2005.

Mr. Dorson was born in New York City. His family moved to Tucson when he was a preschooler. He graduated from Tucson High Magnet School and the University of Arizona, where he earned a journalism degree. He went on to take graduate studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University.

“He was very much his mother’s son,” recalls Weizenbaum. “She was a very vivacious woman with strong convictions about Judaism and politics. In the mid-’70s, she walked into my office and said, ‘You’ve got to meet my son. You’ll really get along.’ And we did.”  Mr. Dorson was an educator for more than three decades, including 15 years as a religious school director at Temple Emanu-El.

More recently, notes Weizenbaum, “he invited me to his classes at Green Fields. Those kids loved him. He was a very special person. He touched a lot of people. All I can say is anyone who had him for a teacher will always remember him. And that’s not an exaggeration.”

Even Mr. Dorson’s non-Jewish teaching colleagues have referred to him as “Mitch the Mensch.” He joined the social studies department at CFHS in 1995, says Carrie Brennan, now director of City High School. “He was part of a talented team of thoughtful historians, rock-solid teachers, and advocates for school reform and social justice. Mitch was a passionate individual who loved life, loved history, and loved teaching.”

Judaism was “so important to him,” says Rabbi Thomas Louchheim of Congregation Or Chadash, who knew Mr. Dorson for 23 years. “Mitch was one of those Jews who felt the prophets informed his life,” says the rabbi. “He lived social justice all the time. He was always the guy for the cause.”

Louchheim taught seventh grade B’nai Mitzvah classes with Mr. Dorson for nearly a decade. “He helped kids write their sermons. Mitch made a complete connection with each and every individual student. That’s what made him so special. We were together almost every single week. I’ll miss him.”

Stuart Mellan, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, posted Tuesday on his Facebook page that Mr. Dorson was “truly one of a kind…He will be missed and remembered for the caring, kind and passionate community educator that he was.”

A memorial service will be held on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Memorial contributions may be made to the Community Food Bank or UNICEF.

Mr. Dorson is survived by his children, Elana (Mike) Giordano and Noah Dorson; and his brother, Bob (Nancy) Dorson of Tucson.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his father, Benzion, at a memorial day for Yoni Netanyahu at Mount Herzl military cemetary in Jerusalem, June 26, 2007. (Michael Fattal/Flash90)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Benzion Netanyahu — historian, one-time political activist and father of Israel’s prime minister — died Monday in Jerusalem at 102. An accomplished scholar and the patriarch of one of Israel’s most important political families, he also played a surprising and little-known role in American political history.

Netanyahu was born in Poland in 1910 to a family deeply immersed in the world of religious Zionism. His father, Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky, a popular Zionist preacher, brought the family to British-ruled Palestine in 1920. He Hebraicized the family name to Netanyahu.

In the wake of the Palestinian Arab riots of 1929, Netanyahu was attracted to the militant wing of the Zionist movement, Revisionist Zionism, headed by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky. His literary talents were recognized early on, and he served as editor in chief of the Revisionist newspaper HaYarden in the 1930s.

In 1940, Jabotinsky sent several of his leading disciples, including Netanyahu and future Knesset member Hillel Kook (better known as Peter Bergson), to the United States to seek funds and public support for the rescue of Europe’s Jews and creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

“It was a brand new world for us,” Netanyahu told me in one of my interviews with him. “I had never been to America. But I had to learn quickly — there was no time. The world of European Jewry was going up in flames.”

Netanyahu became executive director of the U.S. wing of the Revisionist Zionist movement and editor of its magazine, Zionews. His essays were notable for their passion, political insights and high level of fluency in a language he only recently had mastered. One 1944 editorial criticized mainstream Jewish leaders as “too cautious, too appeasing, and too ready to swallow the meaningless statements of sympathy that [are] issued from high places.”

Bergson and Netanyahu employed tactics that were not commonly used by the American Jewish community at the time, including placing full-page advertisements in The New York Times and other newspapers. Some of the ads challenged the Roosevelt administration’s stance on refugees. Others took aim at the British government’s White Paper policy of closing Palestine to Jewish immigration. One that Netanyahu authored was headlined “The White Paper Must Be Smashed, if Millions of Jews are to be Saved!”

Netanyahu divided his time between Revisionist headquarters in New York City and Capitol Hill, where he sought to mobilize congressional backing for the Zionist cause. At the time, mainstream Jewish leaders such as Rabbi Stephen S. Wise were strong supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and stayed away from the Republicans. Netanyahu, by contrast, actively cultivated ties to prominent Republicans such as former President Herbert Hoover, as well as dissident Democrats such as Sen. Elbert Thomas of Utah, a Mormon.

In 1944, Netanyahu sought to have the Republican Party endorse Jewish rescue and statehood.

In the months leading up to that year’s Republican national convention, the Revisionists undertook what they called “a systematic campaign of enlightenment” about Palestine among GOP leaders such as Hoover, Sen. Robert Taft, who chaired the convention’s resolutions committee, and Rep. Clare Booth Luce, wife of the publisher of Time and Life magazines.

The GOP adopted an unprecedented plank demanding “refuge for millions of distressed Jewish men, women, and children driven from their homes by tyranny” and the establishment of a “free and democratic” Jewish state. The Republicans’ move compelled the Democrats to compete for Jewish support and treat the Jewish vote as if it were up for grabs. The Democratic National Convention, which was held the following month in Chicago, for the first time endorsed “unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization” of Palestine and the establishment of “a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.”

These events helped ensure that support for Zionism and later Israel would become a permanent part of American political culture. Every subsequent Republican and Democratic convention has adopted a similar plank. To do less became politically inconceivable.

In recent years, pundits have speculated on the extent to which Benzion Netanyahu may have influenced his son’s actions as prime minister. While it is difficult to draw a direct connection between father and son on specific policy matters, there is a parallel in their efforts to cultivate support for Israel on both sides of the political aisle.

While working as a political activist in the 1940s, Benzion Netanyahu also managed to complete a doctorate in medieval Jewish history at Dropsie College in Philadelphia. He later taught Jewish history at Dropsie, and then at the University of Denver and Cornell University. Netanyahu’s magisterial study, “The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain,” widely considered a groundbreaking work in his field, was published in 1995. He spent time in both Israel and the United States over the years, returning to Israel permanently in 1976, the same year his son Yoni was killed while leading the Entebbe rescue operation.

Notoriously reluctant to grant interviews, Netanyahu generally succeeded in eluding the spotlight. He only recently agreed to cooperate in the first documentary on his life and legacy, by Israeli filmmaker Moshe Levinson, which coincidentally is scheduled to premiere this week in Jerusalem.

(Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington. His latest book, co-authored with Sonja Schoepf Wentling, is “Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Vote’ and Bipartisan Support for Israel.”)

Harold Bongarten

Harold Bongarten, 89, of Tucson, died April 2, 2012.

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Mr. Bongarten received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Northeastern University, a masters of management from the University of Pittsburgh, and completed the advanced management program at Harvard Business School. During World War II, he was a counter-intelligence specialist in the U. S. Army in the European theater, where he was awarded the Bronze Star. Following the war, he was made adjutant mayor of Mannheim, Germany. Mr. Bongarten worked at General Electric Company for 37 years, culminating with the position of general manager in the apparatus services division. After retiring from GE, he developed a consulting business with his wife, Alma, specializing in railroad maintenance and labor practices. Mr. Bongarten was president and a life board member of the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona. He was a member of the board and treasurer of Temple Emanu-El, on the board of the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation, president of B’nai B’rith (Sahuaro Lodge) and was named Man of the Year by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. Mr. Bongarten was board president of the Direct Caregiver Association, and a director of the Direct Care Giver Institute, Inc.

Mr. Bongarten was preceded in death by his first wife, Alma Bongarten. Survivors include his wife, Martha; children, Randall (Liz) Bongarten and Bruce (Cindy) Bongarten, both of New York, Karl (Rita) Bongarten of North Carolina and Elaine (Steve) Mickel of Chicago, Ill.; six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Funeral services were held at Temple Emanu-El with Rabbi Samuel Cohon officiating. Interment followed in the Temple Emanu-El section of Evergreen Cemetery.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Direct Caregiver Association, 3003 S. Country Club Road, #229, Tucson, AZ 85713; the Jewish Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, 5546 E. Fourth St., #100, Tucson, AZ 85711; or Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Road, Tucson, AZ 85716.

“Elan’s premature death will leave a huge void in the Jewish world,” said WJC President Ronald Lauder, who called Steinberg one of the “greatest Jewish activists” of the past decade. “He was deeply committed to advocating the rights of the Jews around the world and of Holocaust survivors in particular. He was probably the most gifted communication professional in the Jewish organizational world.”

Steinberg helped organize the research, hearings, media campaign and eventually the lawsuit that forced Swiss banks to agree to pay $1.2 billion to compensate Holocaust victims and their descendants. In the aftermath of that action, European governments, insurance companies and other organizations also began payments.

Columnist Isi Liebler described the effort as Steinberg’s “most impressive contribution” to the Jewish people and said his “premature death represents an irreplaceable loss to world Jewry.”

Born in Rishon Lezion, Israel, on June 2, 1952, to Holocaust survivor parents, Steinberg grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and received a master’s degree in political science from the City University of New York.

He joined the WJC in 1978, rising to become world executive director. He left the organization in 2004 in protest against financial irregularities there. He later became senior adviser to Lauder, as well as vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.

Among his accomplishments at the WJC, Steinberg initiated a campaign challenging former United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim over his Nazi associations when he was running for the Austrian presidency, and persuaded the Vatican and Spain to recognize Israel.

Steinberg also pushed the opposition to a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz and convinced filmmaker Steven Spielberg not to film scenes for “Schindler’s List” at the Nazi death camp.

Steinberg’s approach to those issues changed the way Jewish organizations worked with and pressured world governments and agencies.

Noting that the WJC had been seen as the “greatest secret of Jewish life” with its quiet diplomacy, Steinberg said he brought “a newer, American-style leadership — less timid, more forceful, unashamedly Jewish.”

Yet even some of the Jewish world’s most outspoken leaders sometimes questioned Steinberg’s approach.

Simon Wiesenthal questioned the anti-Waldheim campaign, saying Waldheim was an “opportunist,” not a war criminal. Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, told The New York Times that while he supported WJC’s “persistence” on the Swiss compensation, he worried that the Swiss might begin to see Jews as their enemy because the campaign “fed into the stereotype that Jews have money, that it’s the most important thing to them.”

Writer Douglas Bloomfield said Steinberg’s goal with the Swiss banks was not only money.

“He would say that the real goal of the campaign was moral as well as material restitution — justice for the victims, for the survivors and for their families,” Bloomfield wrote.

In a statement read at Steinberg’s funeral, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said, “Whenever Jews were in danger or Jewish honor offended, he vigorously yet elegantly spoke up. Whenever Jewish memory was attacked, he attacked the attacker.”

Steinberg is survived by his wife, Sharon, and three children, and a brother.

Marilyn Burkam

Marilyn Burkam, 76, died March 6, 2012.

Born in Newark, N.J., Mrs. Burkam grew up in Las Cruces, N.M., and worked at White Sands Proving Grounds, where she met Edward Burkam. They married and moved to Union, N.J. They moved to Tucson in 1984 to be near their daughters. They were the owner/operators of Handicar Transportation Services.

Mrs. Burkam was preceded in death by her husband, Edward M. Burkam. Survivors include her daughters Anita (Danny) Levkowitz of Tucson and Karen (Jon) Dien of San Diego, Calif.; four grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Services were held at Evergreen Mortuary, with Rabbi Robert Eisen officiating. Interment followed in the Congregation Anshei Israel section of Evergreen Cemetery.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Community Food Bank, 3003 S. Country Club Road, #221, Tucson, AZ 85713 or the ASPCA, 424 E. 92nd St., New York, NY 10128.

He was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1928 and lived there until 1967 when he moved with his family to Los Angeles, Calif., (where he still resided). Danny worked at MCA/Universal in the publicity department for more than 40 years. Dan was a dedicated member and vice president of Congregation Etz Jacob, where he chaired the education committee.

A beloved father, grandfather, husband, uncle and son, Dan loved history, old Hollywood actors and films (especially “The Wizard of Oz”), the Chicago White Sox, trolleys and trains, opera and ice cream, visiting cemeteries, theaters, and so much more, but most of all he loved to have a good time with his friends and family wherever he went. He strove to make every moment in life meaningful, and he was a true ish chesed (a man of kindness).

His memory will be cherished, along with the memory of his wife, Eleanor, by his surviving children Susan Silverman (Ri­chard Roati), Steven Silverman (E. Virginia Claridades), Michael Silverman, and grandchildren Ezra Roati and Korey Roati.

Donations gratefully accepted by: Cong. Etz Jacob, 7659 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036 or G.A.R.D.E.N. Inc., P.O. Box 40743, Tucson, AZ 85717, www.garden inc.org. May his memory be a blessing forever.