USS Carl Levin is the latest US Navy ship to honor a Jewish American
The USS Carl Levin, named for the late Jewish senator from Michigan. Courtesy of US Department of Defense
By Beth Harpaz June 30, 2023
The U.S. Navy has commissioned a ship honoring the late U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan who chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee. The ship is the latest of more than a dozen Navy vessels named for notable Jews.
Thousands of people, including Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Levin’s daughters Erica, Kate and Laura, attended the commissioning of the USS Carl M. Levin on June 24 in Baltimore. (“Commissioning” a ship is military parlance for a ceremony in which the vessel is place in active service.)
The steel-gray guided missile destroyer, festooned with red, white and blue bunting and a banner bearing the motto, “Tenacious in the Fight,” is 509.5 feet long and 59 feet wide.
Other Navy ships named for Jews include one honoring labor leader Samuel Gompers, several named for men killed in World War II and others honoring Jews who served in the U.S. military in the 19th century.
A band played “Anchors Aweigh” as several hundred sailors in crisp white uniforms jogged aboard. The ship then headed out to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii via the Panama Canal, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, which said it will ultimately make its homeport in San Diego.
Tom Clark, who worked for Levin before he became a senator, attended the ceremony and said speakers cited Levin’s “integrity and honesty, important attributes for any public official but important values that we as Jews expect of ourselves everyday.”
Levin, who died in 2021, was in the U.S. Senate for 36 years, from 1979 to 2015, a tenure that made him the longest-serving senator in Michigan state history. The U.S. Department of Defense described him as “a staunch supporter of the armed services through his work and leadership as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.”
Levin never served in the military, and once said: “I thought there was a big gap in terms of my background.” Serving on the Senate committee, he said, “was a way of providing service.” His work included advocating for military cost controls, declassification of secret documents, dismantling nuclear and other weapons in post-Soviet states, banning intercontinental ballistic missiles, addressing sexual assault issues in the military, ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on LGBTQ+ military service members and investigating the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a former U.S. Navy chaplain, gave the invocation and benediction for the new ship. “May Carl Levin’s legacy of integrity and moral courage inspire us to make our world a better place,” he said. Because the event took place on Shabbat, Resnicoff walked 3 miles from his hotel to the shipyard, then had a special escort to the ship itself because pedestrians were not permitted in the area.
Other Navy ships bearing Jewish names, in addition to the USS Samuel Gompers, include:
- the USS Bronstein, named for a doctor serving aboard a U.S. ship torpedoed by Germans off Cape May, New Jersey, in 1942
- the USS Eisner, named for a sailor who died in the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal
- the USS Flusser, a 1930s-era ship named for a lieutenant commander who died during the Civil War
- the USS Hyman, USS David Strauss and USS Silverstein, named for men lost in the Battle of Coral Sea off Australia during World War II
- the USS Israel, a World War I-era ship named for a sailor who died in 1804
- the USS Jeffery and the USS Leopold, named for men who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor
- the USS Hyman Rickover, named for the admiral who ran the Navy’s nuclear program for decades
- the USS Levy, named for Uriah Levy, who served in the War of 1812 and was the first Jewish commodore of the U.S. Navy.
The Navy also plans to name a ship for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It will be part of the so-called “John Lewis class” of replenishment oilers, honoring those who fought for civil and human rights.
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