LEVINGER, LEE JOSEPH

LEVINGER, LEE JOSEPH (1890–1966), U.S. Reform rabbi. Born in Burke, Idaho, Levinger was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1914. He held several pulpits and was a chaplain with the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918–19. In 1929 he was national chaplain of the American Legion. Levinger became director of the Hillel Foundation at Ohio State University in 1925 and when in 1935 the National Hillel Commission set up a bureau of research to study the economic and occupational adjustment of Jewish students, it appointed him director. From 1942 to 1947 he was a field worker for the National Jewish Welfare Board and in 1948 he became chaplain of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto, California. Levinger wrote a number of books. His History of the Jews in the United States which appeared in 1931 was one of the first works of its kind and went through several editions. He also wrote A Jewish Chaplain in France (1921); Anti-Semitism Yesterday and Tomorrow (1936); and Folk and Faith (1942). In 1916 he married ELMA EHRLICH, author of several books and plays for Jewish children. (Sefton D. Temkin)