Most people hope to live a good life. Ephraim Margolin lived a great one. Not just an eyewitness to history, he was an active participant in it: escaping Europe before the Holocaust, fighting in Israel’s War of Independence, becoming a renowned civil rights attorney and serving the Jewish community, both locally and globally.
Ephraim Margolin died March 10 in San Francisco. He was 97.
“His story and very presence forced people to reconcile that a blue-ribbon civil rights champion was also a staunch supporter and architect of Israel,” said Mark Schickman, Margolin’s friend and a fellow attorney. “He became one of the most famous and respected legal scholars and practitioners in America.”
Doug Kahn, former executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, worked with Margolin in the Soviet Jewry movement in the 1970s and later when Margolin chaired JCRC from 1989 to 1991.
“He was an intellectual giant with the heart of an activist,” Kahn said. “He was a fierce advocate with a gentle soul. He was a brilliant teacher and leader and a lifelong learner — and what a remarkable life it was.”
Childhood in Europe and Tel Aviv
Born in Berlin while his parents were studying at university, Margolin grew up in Lodz, Poland. His father, Julius Margolin, was a noted Jewish philosopher, author and scholar. But after Hitler’s ascent in the mid-1930s, the family sensed looming danger.
“My dad told me he was out playing in the yard when the landlord said, ‘Have you slaughtered any Christian children for Passover?’” recalled son Alex Margolin. “He told his mom, and she turned white. Within a couple months they left in 1936.”
While young Ephraim and his mother fled to Tel Aviv in British Mandatory Palestine, his father languished in a Soviet gulag throughout World War II. They were all ultimately reunited.
In a 2009 J. article celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv, Margolin recounted his early days in the city. As a child, he would watch the horse-drawn cart roll through his neighborhood, a black-frocked rabbi at the reins, blowing a trumpet to welcome Shabbat.
“My mother encouraged me to listen to the Israel Philharmonic,” he recalled. “When they played in one of the open areas, I would sit on a tree and listen.”
Fighting in pre-state Israel
But troubled times had come to pre-state Israel, as Arab uprisings and harsh British rule ran headlong into the yearning for a Jewish state. As a member of the Zionist youth movement Beitar, Margolin befriended a bespectacled activist named Menachem Begin.
“Begin was my ideal of a Polish gentleman,” Margolin told J. in 2009. “He was a friendly sort of guy, but at the same time he was quite clear in his own mind, and usually would end up never changing his mind.”
Margolin joined the Zionist guerrilla fighting force known as the Irgun. During the War of Independence, he manned a 3-inch mortar defending Tel Aviv. Around that time, Begin, a future prime minister of Israel, asked Margolin if he would be interested in serving as his secretary.
“On the first day of work, my father asked, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ Neither had any idea of what the job was,” said son Evan Margolin. “Then the job morphed into [Begin’s] assistant, and morphed further as the entire swell of history took them places.”
“We have a British-issue helmet at home,” added Alex. “It has a huge dent in it. This was from a building falling down and hitting my dad in the head.”
Early Israeli history
Margolin was a witness to one of the most consequential moments in early Israeli history known as the Altalena affair (named for an offshore ship laden with weapons) when the newly established Israel Defense Forces confronted the still-separate Irgun forces in June 1948, firing on each other.
“You had … Israelis fighting each other,” Alex noted, saying the incident proved to be one of the defining moments of his father’s life. “My dad said it was horrifying that this would happen. He’d seen Jew kill Jew. And after the Holocaust, he wondered how we could do this.”
After the war, Margolin attended Hebrew University in Jerusalem and then was recruited by Yale Law School, where he received his law degree in 1952. While doing post-graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he met an opera singer named Gilda Lasko. Margolin proposed on New Year’s Eve 1953, which led to a 60-year love match.
Legal career
The couple moved to Israel in 1956, where Margolin clerked for the Israeli Supreme Court and also opened a law practice. The next year, they rolled the dice and moved to San Francisco, where Margolin practiced constitutional and criminal law for 63 years.
Right away, he did things differently. He embraced the concept of pro-bono cases, providing free legal services to those who needed it most yet could not afford it. He excelled in civil rights law and landed many big cases, including representing Jeffrey Wigand, the whistleblower who took on the tobacco industry. The case led to a historic settlement in 1998 for more than $200 billion.
Margolin taught at the University of California’s law schools in Berkeley and San Francisco. He was a founder of the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, served as president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and was an active member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“He was a great criminal defense lawyer,” Schickman said, “and deservedly proud of his impact and leadership. He had a rare combination of intelligence and eloquence. I felt I always started with an edge when I worked on cases with him. And, of course, he was a champion of Jewish rights, in the courtroom as well as the community.”
Jewish community activist
In that capacity, he was a lay leader of JCRC and the Northern California chapter of the American Jewish Congress. He was also an active member of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco.
Margolin delivered a Yom Kippur dvar Torah from Beth Sholom’s bimah for an astonishing 52 years straight. At home, the family celebrated all Jewish holidays. Both sons became a bar mitzvah at the Kotel in Jerusalem.
“We had the most supportive parents, who encouraged us to go in our own directions,” said Evan. “They took such pride and such ownership and joy in our accomplishments.”
Margolin also served as an attorney of the State of Israel.
“He felt guilty about leaving Israel,” said son Alex. “When he was asked to be an attorney [for Israel], he said, ‘But I left.’ The ambassador said it didn’t matter. ‘You’re helping now.’”
Gilda Margolin passed away in 2012. Margolin continued to practice law for several more years before retiring at age 92, though a few years later he said he missed the intellectual engagement and excitement of the practice. But he loved his role as grandfather to his two grandsons. He spent much of his final three years in Ketchum, Idaho, where Alex’s family resides.
Though he struggled with various health issues late in life, Margolin remained a fighter to the end.
“He had a deep yearning to be a savior, a white knight, for people who really needed it,” Alex said. “He loved to help people.”
Ephraim Margolin is survived by sons Alex Margolin of Ketchum and Evan Margolin of San Francisco and two grandsons.