Frank R. Lautenberg, senior U.S. Senator from New Jersey and a member of the Democratic Party, as well as the last remaining senator to have served in World War II, died June 3 at age 89. He was the oldest member of the Senate.
He served in the Senate from 1982–2001, then retired after 18 years of service. He came out of that retirement not long afterwards at the behest of his party, and in 2003, at 78, began his fourth term. He was well into his fifth term at the time of his death. He was the first New Jersey resident to have been elected to five terms.
Republican Gov. Chris Christie will appoint a replacement until an election for the full six-year term takes place in October.
Lautenberg had served on three Senate committees: Appropriations; Commerce, Science and Transportation; and Environment and Public Works. He also served as chairman of two subcommittees under the latter two committees.
For much of his senatorial career, he served alongside New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a former basketball professional and presidential candidate. While Bradley received most of the media attention, Lautenberg focused on much of the everyday ground work. He supported road and transit projects, and was a proponent of cleaning up the much-maligned environment of his state.
In Jewish circles, he was highly regarded for getting the Lautenberg Amendment enacted as part of the 1990 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. It facilitated the emigration of Soviet Jews by relaxing standards for refugee status and granting immigrant status to those who could show religious persecution in their native lands. Tens of thousands of Jews benefited from that law, and it later would help other religious minorities as well. He was quoted as being extremely proud of these results.
The second Lautenberg Amendment, passed in 1996, bans the sales of guns to those convicted of domestic violence.
He was involved with numerous Jewish organizations, and at the time of his death sat on the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The senator also visited Israel almost 100 times, beginning in 1969.
‘Cared About the Jewish People’
Frank Raleigh Lautenberg was born on Jan. 23, 1924, in Paterson, N.J., to Eastern European Jewish immigrants Sam and Mollie Lautenberg. He was not exposed to religious education growing up, a point he acknowledged throughout his life. His father, a mill worker, died young; some said this was due to poor health conditions on the job. That was considered to be one reason why Lautenberg devoted so much energy toward environmental issues and worksite safety. He also concentrated on the transportation needs of his state.
Soon after his father died, Lautenberg entered the army and fought in Europe during World War II. After his discharge in 1946, he entered Columbia University on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1949 with an economics degree.
In 1953, he began a job as a salesman with Automated Payrolls, run by Henry and Joseph Taub, brothers he knew from his home town. The company went public in 1961, changing its name to Automated Data Processing Inc. The first payroll company in the United States, it eventually became one of the largest computing service companies in the world. Lautenberg rose through the ranks to become CEO—and a millionaire.
He used his newfound influence, professional and financial, to support all kinds of Jewish causes. Among them was Chabad-Lubavitch.
“Frank Lautenberg was a proud American Jew,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad). “He was crucial in easing the burden of Soviet Jews. He was also a staunch supporter of Israel and a household name for Jewish people following Washington.”
“He was an honorary zayde for all of the Jews working on Capitol Hill.”
Shemtov, who knew the senator for about 30 years, said “whenever he was asked to help, he did what he needed to do to help.”
Lautenberg came to events honoring the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory; as well as events for Jewish staffers and Chanukah celebrations, according to Shemtov.
A ‘Yechidus’ with the Rebbe
The rabbi added that “it is well known that Senator Lautenberg had a momentous yechidus [private meeting] with the Rebbe, where the Rebbe said certain things needed to be done. The Rebbe told him, ‘You are in the computer business. What used to take a long time to do should now be quicker.’ ”
That meeting took place when Lautenberg was national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, the main fundraising arm of American Jewry, a position he held from 1972 to 1975. The 51-year-old businessman spent more than an hour with the Rebbe at Lubavitch world headquarters in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.
The Rebbe discussed global and communal issues, including the state of Israel and the repressive situation Jews faced in the Soviet Union. And he stressed to Lautenberg that as the head of UJA, “You must do something to save the Jewish people!”
He spent much time on assimilation, urging that more needed to be done to educate young Jews in America. Lautenberg countered that many parts of the world needed help as well. They also spoke about how best to spend donated dollars.
At one point, the Rebbe declared, “The United Jewish Appeal is expected to do Jewish activities.”
Years later, when Lautenberg was a senator, he was reported as saying: “At that time, I did not agree with the Rebbe. But many years later, I see that he was correct. The Rebbe saw Jewish education as a priority; he saw very far ahead, what the rest of us could not yet understand.”
Toward the end of their talk, on a more personal level, the Rebbe’s advice included this: “. . . a change that a human being [makes] after 50 or 40, or after 70, it is a change—and it is a change in a good direction, and it is a good change.”
“A change made in a teenager,” he continued, “it is some kind of seed, and a small change in a seed can change all the tree, and the fruits, radically. And if this small change is in a good direction, the fruits can be beautiful, magnificent.”
The Rebbe was alluding to Lautenberg and how he could take decisive steps toward greater religious practice, which would positively affect his family. “Children, they are automatically, subconsciously emulating their parents. And if they will see that Mr. Lautenberg, being a successful businessman, a successful social activist, a special community worker . . . 50 years he has lived according to this standard, and nevertheless he has the courage and accepted the challenge, to re-evaluate his outlook on life.”
Perhaps, the Rebbe encouraged, the senator could change his behavior by observing Shabbat and putting on tefillin. “It will be a shock for your children, but it will be a good shock. It can bring them to changing radically their outlook on life and their way of life, according to your expectations of them.”
Rabbi Moshe Herson, dean of the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, N.J., and head shaliach for the state of New Jersey, knew Lautenberg for “many, many years.”
He said after meeting with the Rebbe, Lautenberg called him.
“ ‘Rabbi,’ he said to me, ‘I’m not quite ready to change my lifestyle, but the way I see things, the future of Judaism orbits somewhere around your movement.”
Lautenberg spoke at Chabad dinners and attended Chabad events, said Herson, and he always appreciated his shmurah matzah at Passover, hand-delivered. “We’d give it to him at his office in New Jersey, and years ago I once gave it to him in Washington.”
“He was a fine person, intelligent, sometimes outspoken—a fine person, and he cared a great deal about the Jewish people and tradition and Eretz Yisroel,” recalled the rabbi. “He did care about that, all his life. He was dedicated to that.”
The senator had four children with Lois Levenson; after 31 years, the marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg; four children and two stepchildren; and 13 grandchildren.
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