Vale Dianne Feinstein
Feinstein was for years a centrist on Israel, although she was a sharp critic of the country's treatment of non-Orthodox Jews.
(JTA) – Dianne Feinstein, the long-serving Jewish senator from California, has died.
Feinstein, who had recently faced criticism for remaining in the Senate despite clearly failing health, was 90 years old. She served in the Senate for more than three decades and was its longest-serving woman.
She became a national figure in 1978 when she found the body of Harvey Milk.
Milk, who was Jewish, was the first openly gay elected official in the city’s history and was assassinated by former colleague, Dan White, who also killed San Francisco mayor George Moscone. Feinstein announced the murders while her hands were still stained with Milk’s blood. She soon stepped in to replace Moscone, serving two terms as mayor.
Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933, in San Francisco. Her father was a Jewish physician and her mother was a model who was born to an ethnically Jewish family but raised in the Russian Orthodox church. Her parents left it up to her to decide which faith suited her. When she was 20, she picked Judaism, “because I liked its simplicity and directness”.
She was twice widowed and once divorced; all three of her husbands were Jewish.
She was an outspoken advocate for gun control, a cause she took with her into the Senate. Feinstein took the lead in passing an assault weapons ban in 1994. It lapsed after 10 years, and since 2004 she persistently but unsuccessfully sought to reinstate it.
Also in 1994, Feinstein joined then-senator Joe Biden in passing the Violence Against Women Act.
Feinstein stood apart from her liberal cohort in some respects. Her best-known split with liberals was her championing the death penalty until 2018, when she said during her campaign for re-election that its unfair application had finally changed her mind.
In 2004, she feuded with Kamala Harris, then the San Francisco district attorney and now the Vice-President, when she learned at the funeral of a slain police officer that Harris opposed the death penalty for his killer.
Feinstein was for years a centrist on Israel, although she was a sharp critic of the country’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews. It was her revulsion for deadly weapons that nudged her toward questioning Israel: she was appalled at Israel’s use of cluster bombs in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
More recently, she championed renewed aid to the Palestinians.
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