Jacob Javits Dead at 81

Funeral services will be held Monday in New York for Jacob Javits, four-term United States Senator from New York, who died Friday of cardiac arrest while on vacation in West Palm Beach, Florida. He was 81 years old. Thousands are expected to attend the services, which will be held at Central Synagogue in Manhattan.

Javits, the son of Jewish immigrant parents, rose from poverty on the Lower East Side of New York to become one of the longest-serving solons in the Congress and one of the biggest vote-getters in American history. A political maverick, he ran as a liberal Republican in every political race, beating out well-known Democrats in overwhelmingly Democratic bastions.

Always a minority in the minority party, Javits became a champion of liberal causes, borrowing the sensibilities of his youth in New York’s Jewish ghetto and expanding them to embrace all minorities. He was a moving force behind the civil rights movement, fair treatment for the poor and elderly, guaranteed pensions for retired persons, and, in the end, of the right to die with dignity.

A TRUE AMERICAN DREAM

His career was a true American dream. Jacob Koppel Javits was born May 18, 1904 in a Stanton Street tenement where his father, Morris, was the janitor. Morris Jawetz from Galicia, who changed the name’s spelling in America, liked to say he believed the name’s origin lay in the Biblical family of scribes of Jabez, near Jerusalem.

His mother, Ida Littman, was a native of Safed in Ottoman Palestine, who came to America by way of Russia. She helped support the family by peddling sundry wares from a pushcart.

The family moved to Brooklyn and then Washington Heights, later to be Javits’ stepping-off point in his political career. He put himself through Columbia University and New York University Law School nights while working days in a print shop and a pipe factory. He passed the New York Bar while clerking in his brother Ben’s law firm, then joined the Republican Party with the campaign of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. He chose, he said, the party of Lincoln, which he considered the "party of equality."

His political career began in 1946 when he surprised all by winning the 21st District of New York, the Washington Heights-Inwood area of upper Manhattan heavily populated by German Jews. After two terms as Congressman, Javits was elected New York State Attorney General. In 1956, he won his first term as Senator. Javits’ strong Jewish sentiments and his staunch support for the Jewish State made him an unsurpassed favorite with Jewish voters across the political spectrum. At no time in his long career of public service did he ever forget or fail to mention his origins. He was a long-time member of several major Jewish organizations. He was active in B’nai B’rith and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, for which he served as honorary vice-chairman more than 25 years. In 1981, Javits was awarded the ADL’s Haym Salomon Award.

In January 1985, Javits received a special presentation of the Community Achievement Award of the American ORT Federation (AOF). Javits was an AOF Board member since the 1940’s, when he visited ORT training centers in the German DP camps immediately after World War II. His testimony before Congress helped focus attention on the plight of the refugees, and on ORT’s help in preparing them for their new lives.

In October, 1984, Javits received a Public Service Achievement Award of the UJA Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York. Last week, the first Jacob Javits Humanitarian Award of the UJA Young Leadership was awarded to Elie Wiesel, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Javits was also active in the Jewish Committee, UJA-Federation, and the American-Israel Cultural Foundation.

VIEWS ON TOPICAL ISSUES

Javits’ record in Congress bespoke his overriding involvement with his Jewish heritage. "I’ve always felt close to Judaism," he remarked in an interview with The Jewish Week (New York). "Its precepts animated my public and private careers… My heritage is the stuff of the Prophets."

Asked to comment on his perception of the American Jewish community, Javits responded that he felt it was "healthy and vigorous…I believe there is an enhanced consciousness of the position of Jews on earth."

Addressing the issue of Black-Jewish relations, he said "it is regrettable that a strain has developed between the Black minority and the Jewish community. But I believe that time and good work on both sides will heal that breach and again secure the natural alliance for human rights and for civil rights and liberties."

On Israel, he remarked, "I believe Israel will live to see a day when it is a real leader in the affairs of mankind, and this goes for science, technology and health, as well as moral and spiritual leadership and international security."

Maintaining his rights as an American Jew, however, he counseled that "Jews in the United States should not be inhibited respecting criticism of Israel…while we should give our full support to Israel for security and economic well-being, we must recognize its right to have an independent point of view and policy."

NOT JUST A SENATOR, BUT A LEGEND

In 1980, Javits suffered his first defeat at the polls, losing his 23-year Senate seat to then-unknown Alfonse D’Amato, a Supervisor from Hempstead, Long Island. Javits was then beginning to show the signs of the debilitating motor neuron disease from which he Suffered–amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, after the baseball player who died of the then-unfamiliar illness.

Javits’ loss of his Senate seat cost him the prize he had sought so long, the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, the post that would have been his as the Republicans became the majority party in the Senate for the first time in his career.

Javits’ colleagues bid farewell to their longtime colleague in an hours-long tribute on the Senate floor, saying goodbye not just to a Senator but to a legend.