2025 Lowenthal Volunteer Service Awardee: Josh Levin

Josh Levin is a Volunteer Staff Attorney who works with Tzedek DC. He is also the 2025 recipient of our Lowenthal Volunteer Service Award, to be formally presented at our 9/29 event, Eat Well, Do Justice!®

Josh joined Tzedek DC in 2019 after seeing a Washington Jewish Week article about our founding. He co-leads our efforts on fines and fees reform. Thanks in significant part to these efforts, the DC government no longer enforces the Clean Hands Law against residents applying to obtain or renew a driver’s license while owing over $100 in fines or fees to the District!

Josh retired from the U.S. DOJ’s Environment & Natural Resources Division in 2018 following a distinguished career as a Senior Trial Attorney representing and advising EPA, DOD, and other federal agencies.

For seven years, Josh was also a member of the Office of Legal Policy’s Judicial Nominations Working Group, screening judicial nominees. Earlier in his career, he also worked as an investigative reporter and professional staff member with the U.S Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

Josh’s work across his prominent career, including his important work with Tzedek DC, earned him the Public Service Benefit Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, in 2023.

Josh and his wife of 34 years, Debra Fried Levin, a longtime political activist and fundraiser, have three adult sons—Ben, Ethan, and Arye. He enjoys traveling and has visited all 50 states as well as 47 of the 63 U.S. National Parks. He has also trekked in the Himalayas, New Zealand, and Kenya.

Josh can name the U.S. presidents in order and proudly recalls meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on an airplane in 1966. He is a lifelong lover of the Chicago White Sox.

About Eat Well, Do Justice!®

Since 2017, Tzedek DC has held a fundraiser each September called Eat Well, Do Justice!®. The event brings together philanthropists and DC’s top culinary minds in support of the organization’s work to safeguard the legal rights and financial health of DC residents with lower incomes, and, in doing so, help close the pervasive justice and wealth gaps and, ultimately, build and strengthen community bridges. Each year, chefs compete with their spins on a food, ingredient, or style of food traditionally eaten in the Jewish community.

The Eat Well, Do Justice!® theme for 2025 is Apples & Honey Throwdown! It will be a meaningful and enjoyable evening, including a delicious array of apple and honey-themed dishes to taste and be voted on by the attendees and the guest judges. 

Confirmed featured guest judges include Reverend Thomas Bowen, who under President Biden led the White House’s faith engagement, and who serves as the Earl L. Harrison Minister of Social Justice at Shiloh Baptist Church in DC; Bea Gurwitz, E.D, of the Capital Jewish Museum; Seth Waxman, WilmerHale Partner, former U.S. Solicitor General, and past recipient of the American Jewish Committee’s Judge Learned Hand Award; and Chef Daniel Rosen, winner of our 2024 Eat Well, Do Justice!® event! 

In addition, we’ll have live music, including from former Broadway In the Heights cast member Willis White.

Past Eat Well, Do Justice!® events have sold out, so lock in your ticket or sponsorship purchase today!