Nathan Lewin
Many can and, hopefully, will report how Marshall Breger benefited them during his accomplishment-laden life. We were comrades in legal practice and in teaching, where he took the independent step of associating with Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.
I can add a significant account of his initiative and persistence for a little-known Jewish cause in 1989. George H.W. Bush had been recently elected president of the U.S., and Marshall — who had served during the previous Reagan administration — continued as the liaison to America’s Jewish community while also officially occupying the office of Chairman of the Administrative Conference.
Jews in the former Soviet Union were being permitted to leave and were choosing whether to go to Israel or come to America (if authorized). My wife, Rikki, and I traveled to Russia that summer and brought with us provisions for Jewish “refuseniks” that we distributed in what was still Leningrad and in Moscow.
We met an astounding Jewish couple — Zev and Carmela Raiz — who were reviving Jewish religious life and teaching in Russia. We spent time with them at a kosher summer facility they created outside Moscow and learned that the still-influential Soviet authorities were denying Zev permission to leave Russia.
We promised the Raizes that we would try to gain freedom for Zev when we returned to the U.S. Although our initial efforts were stymied, an invitation to lecture dispatched by Agudath Israel of the U.S. to Carmela was surprisingly granted. Carmela and the Raizes’ son, Moshe, came to the U.S. on this invitation.
They notified us of their arrival and plans that had been made for them to return after Carmela’s appearances in New York. Rikki and Bernie Kaplan, z”l, persuaded Carmela to overstay, camp in our Maryland suburban home, and campaign in the U.S. for Zev’s release.
Among other influential friends we then had was Marshall Breger. Rikki called him. In contemporaneous recollections Rikki wrote (see Carmela’s autobiographical book “Blue Star Over Red Square” p. 303) she noted, “Breger was then planning the first of what he hoped would become an annual tradition — a Chanukah celebration for White House employees and their children.” (This was apparently the genesis of the White House Chanukah gala that has become an annual tradition.)
Marshall replied that he would try to get Carmela on a “short list of invitees” to the White House event and would also try to get the president to “mention her in his remarks.” Through other friends Rikki reached Jack Kemp, Bush’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who offered to have Carmela sit next to him at the Chanukah event and added, “I’ll make sure to introduce her to the president.”
Carmela and her son were promptly invited to the White House party. In her book, Carmela says: “Marshall Breger was that very ‘magician’ who turned my dreams into reality. I was constantly amazed by how quickly he was able to implement decisions. As soon as a new idea came to him, he would stop the conversation, put aside his cup of coffee, and dash to the telephone to confirm some information, make an agreement, or persuade the person on the other end of the line.”
Marshall’s planned White House Chanukah party was postponed by one day because of the “Panama invasion,” but on Dec. 21, 1989, Carmela and her son Moshe were at the White House and heard President Bush announce that he had presented the names of 20 refuseniks to Chairman Gorbachev and heading the list was Vladimir (Zev’s Russian name) Raiz. Carmela was asked to stand and told “we’ll do all in our power to free your husband.”
It took many more months of private and public efforts to secure Zev Raiz’s release and arrival in Israel. He and Carmela then traveled to the United States for a meeting in April 1990 when Zev expressed his personal gratitude publicly to President Bush at the White House. They celebrated Moshe’s bar mitzvah two months later at the Kotel in Jerusalem, to the delight of hundreds, including Sen. Joe Lieberman, who had participated in their effort and who flew to Israel to join the simcha.
Marshall’s pivotal selfless role in this little-celebrated remarkable event earned him an honored place in his eternal reward. May his memory be a blessing.
Nathan Lewin is a Washington, D.C., attorney who has orally argued many cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, served on the adjunct faculties of leading national law schools and was president of the Greater Washington Jewish Community Council.