In Memoriam, Daniel S. Lev, 1933–2006

Dan S. Lev passed away five years ago. He left a gaping hole that is impossible to fill. Those close to him, and there were many, miss his friendship, advice, and trust. His knowledge, experience, and authority are sorely missed in the academic community, legal institutions and professions, and civil society in Indonesia. We will not find someone who can speak as clearly and forcefully, with as much historical perspective and authority, on legal–political issues in Indonesia. Most of all, we miss his integrity. The real significance of his person, the prism through which all else acquired that unique quality, is that Dan refused to distinguish between his academic and political engagement. He was devoid of petty self-interest, and it was through his actions that he demonstrated his unique value.

Dan was born in a working family that lived on the rough side of town, a source of quiet pride. Youngstown, Ohio, was, for a time, the most corrupt and criminal city of the United States, as Dan would cheerfully recall. Perhaps it was this background that gave Dan a soft spot for the right kind of rascals with whom he could get along famously, as well as a deep dislike for sly, manipulative characters. He would tell stories about city corruption and how Irish, Italian, and Jewish gangs would fight it out on the streets of Youngstown during his youth. He did some boxing himself in his day, even if it is not fully clear how he applied that skill outside the ring. While stocky and agile, he never came across as a very physical man.

His parents had escaped the misery of the Pale and the vicious discrimination of Europe. When a young adolescent, his mother, all by herself, had walked from the depths of Russia to the coast and worked her way across to the United States. Dan never said much about it, for after all, “every second family in the US has a similar family background,” as Arlene, his wife, would comment—her own grandfather had been held in bondage-like conditions in Eastern Europe, escaped, and traveled the same route when a boy. Perhaps like most immigrants, Dan’s parents were not much given to looking back. Even so, a young girl walking to the end of the earth in search of an ideal, against the backdrop of that looming disaster, remains a glorious image.

Dan’s recollections of his Youngstown days were pretty down to earth. He would comment that one of the traditions that his mother had taken from the old continent included very poor cooking—”shoving a chicken in the oven until it burned.” This perhaps explains why Dan loved good food, yet would also eat almost anything uncomplainingly, even my own cooking. Dan was a weak and sickly child, and recalled not being given a name as a toddler to deter the evil eye (his parents called him “the boy,” which must have been confusing in a family of five boys, until Dan began to notice and asked them his true name), and at one point he found lucky coins sown in his pillow cover. He learned about kosher only when he was thrown out for eating a hearty ham sandwich in a Youngstown synagogue, where he did a carpentry job with his father. You fool, his father said with a grin when he found him on his backside in the street, and told him about kosher rules. They never stuck—decades later one of Dan’s great joys when visiting Ong Hok Ham’s famous house parties, besides the good company and the good whiskey, was the traditional suckling pig.

He was a carpenter’s son, the youngest of five brothers. He loved his father, who barely ever spoke a harsh word to him, and Dan named his son after his father. It was a bustling household, with a fair bit of competition among the boys, who were taught early on to stand on their own feet. The boys turned out different in many ways. Some stuck with the world of the father, of wood...