No Better Time Page 3

  Finding one, Leighton knew, was not going to be easy. In the race to end the World Wide Wait, engineers and computer scientists had developed a patchwork of quick fixes, but a lasting solution eluded them at every turn. The problem was simple to state, but the answer was nearly impossible to put a finger on. It wasn’t even clear in which direction to look. The fix lay somewhere in the nexus of the network of networks—the ill defined, tangled, seemingly infinite wilderness of the Internet. In the search for an answer, no one was betting on the theory group. But infinity doesn’t scare theoretical mathematicians. And it certainly didn’t scare Danny Lewin.

  Chapter 2

  Ascent to Israel

  “Who dares wins.”

  —MOTTO OF SAYERET MATKAL,

  otherwise known as “the Unit”

  FROM A YOUNG AGE, Danny Lewin brandished what his parents called “extraordinary vigor,” building impenetrable fortresses, constructing homemade computers, and climbing the foothills surrounding his early home in Englewood, Colorado. The Lewin family enjoyed an enviable, middle-class existence in the suburb of Denver, where they settled just before Danny, their eldest son, was born on May 14, 1970. Both Charles and Peggy, his parents, worked in medicine, Charles as a child and adolescent psychiatrist with a busy private practice and Peggy as a pediatrician for the Denver hospital health program. They owned a spacious home—a contemporary-style house they designed—in the quiet neighborhood of Greenwood Village, filled with young families. They attended Temple Sinai, a Reform Jewish synagogue where Danny celebrated his bar mitzvah.

  As an eighth grade student at Cherry Creek Middle School, Danny was a popular kid: he skied, flirted with girls, and excelled in both academics and athletics. The three Lewin boys—Danny, Jonathan, and Michael—were all extraordinarily gifted. But of the brothers, Danny had seemingly limitless talents of such broad scope they were often a study in contradiction. With thick, beefy hands like bear paws, he could effortlessly grip a barbell to bench-press yet also play a delicate instrument like the violin masterfully. He could bark orders with the intensity of a drill sergeant yet also sing so beautifully he landed starring roles in the musicals staged at his synagogue, often committing all his lines to heart the night before the performance. The only thing he couldn’t do well, according to his parents, was play soccer, which frustrated him to no end.

  Peggy and Charles Lewin created a household that thrived on intellectual pursuits. Charles taught the boys music, literature, art, and science. For the Lewins, learning was a game—and Charles was the ringleader. He could turn almost anything, even routine family chores and meals, into an educational experience. Michael and Jonathan remember their initial dismay when their father pasted over the cartoons on the backs of their cereal boxes with math puzzles and snippets from Scientific American magazine. His nighttime stories became an event worth going to bed for; he would spin some fabulous tale into a problem-solving game, delighting and challenging his sons. “We enjoyed it,” said Michael Lewin. “My father always pushed us to excel; he wanted us to be interested in real things and not just sit around and listen to the television.”

  Charles Lewin also introduced his sons to technology, inspiring in all of them an early interest in computers. Before the advent of the personal computer (PC) in the early 1970s, Charles purchased a kit to assemble a computer himself. The Altair didn’t have a keyboard or a video display, but, for early enthusiasts like Charles, the ability to input data into the machine was thrilling. In 1979, he brought home an Apple II, one of the first successful PCs designed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The Lewins became the only family in their neighborhood to own one, and the three boys—then ages five, seven and nine—spent countless hours teaching themselves how to program it.

  Over the years, however, Charles Lewin had begun to feel increasingly dissatisfied with his comfortable Colorado life. It wasn’t unhappiness he suffered, but a nagging sense of restlessness. “I felt there had to be more to life,” explained Charles. A prolific poet (who later self-published several collections of his work under the pen name Yaakov Ben David), Charles was a serious, introspective man who loathed the trappings of material wealth. In search of a greater purpose in life, he turned to Zionism, the international movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. Gradually, Charles’s identification with Zionism intensified, and he began to seriously consider a move to Israel. The longer he remained in Colorado, the more he felt his Jewish identity being threatened by the shadowy specter of assimilation.

  The best thing for himself and his family, he believed, was for them to “make aliyah,” or immigrate to Israel. Translated literally from Hebrew, aliyah means “ascent”—a term used to describe the repatriation of the Jews to Israel. Returning to the their homeland has long been an aspiration for Jews and a core belief of Zionism. It was rare for Americans to make aliyah, and those who did were usually motivated by deep ideological yearnings. In 1984, when Charles began planning his family’s departure from Colorado, successfully making aliyah with a family of older children was almost unheard of. That year, approximately 2,827 American families made aliyah, and, of those, it’s estimated only a fraction remained permanently in Israel—the majority returning to America frustrated by the challenges of relocating and missing the ease of life back home.

  To ease the shock of his sudden decision to move, Charles presented the plan as a temporary, yearlong trial. His family knew better. While Peggy reluctantly agreed to the move, the three Lewin boys, Danny, Jonathan, and Michael—then ages fourteen, twelve, and ten, respectively—did not want to leave the U.S. And they let their parents know it. If anything could have pulled apart the close-knit family in the move, it was the powerful force of teenage fury. When it came time to leave, Danny cried, shouted, and complained, but Charles was not to be dissuaded. “I thought that, finally, we were doing something that we didn’t quite fully understand where it would lead us or what it could be,” Charles explained. “But it had a sense of purposefulness and fulfillment for our lives as Jews.”

  On July 24, 1984, the Lewins arrived in Haifa, Israel, and began the difficult process of assimilation. They spoke no Hebrew and had no jobs and no real friends or family to help ease their transition. And the Israel that greeted Danny and his family when they arrived that summer was not exactly welcoming. Like most new immigrants, the Lewins first stop was a merkaz klita, a state-run absorption program that provides housing, support, and ulpan (Hebrew school). The Lewins chose to live at an absorption center in the mountainous city of Mevaseret Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Those first months put a strain on the entire family, one so clear to the center’s other residents that they voted the Lewins the “least likely to stay.” But they did stay, and after three months at the center, Peggy and Charles decided it was time to find a home of their own. They settled into a rented apartment in the French Hill section of Jerusalem, a diverse neighborhood densely populated with immigrants from all over the world. The Apple II, which withstood the long journey from Colorado, came with them.

  For new immigrants to Israel, even with government assistance, opening a bank account was fraught with obstacles. Until the late 1980s, obtaining a telephone from Bezeq, the state-owned company that had a monopoly on the country’s telecommunications, often took more than a year and required protekzia (contacts) to sidestep a waiting list of hundreds of thousands.{6} If you were lucky enough to have a television set, it had only one grainy channel, the state-sponsored Channel One. In addition to logistical challenges, the Lewins also faced the daily possibility of violence. Although the start of the First Intifada was still three years away, terrorism was an everyday part of life. In the early 1980s, Jerusalem alone saw dozens of bombings attributed to Palestinian guerrilla groups. In 1984, the city police reported the explosion of forty-one devices—in shopping bags, on sidewalks, even in an aluminum can—which killed seven and wounded fifty-eight.{7}

  To restart their careers, Charles and Peggy had to remai
n in Hebrew classes for six months, enough time to learn the spoken and written proficiency they needed to work. After this, they began three-month rotations at a hospital, jobs that paid almost nothing but were required by the state to practice specialized medicine. In early 1985, Charles started working at a city clinic in Jerusalem, supervising psychologists and psychiatric residents. Peggy found two part-time jobs, one as a pediatrician at a French Hill practice owned by a classmate from her residency program in New York, the other in general pediatrics at a city clinic in Mea She’arim, an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. To treat her Hasidic patients, Peggy had to work with a Yiddish translator. Resuming work was even more challenging for Charles. In anticipation of the move, he took Hebrew classes in Colorado, but even after studying it another six months in Jerusalem, he found it almost impossible to conduct therapy sessions in Hebrew. Because of this, he joined a private practice where he began to build a roster of English-speaking adult and child patients.

  A year passed, and by this time it was clear the move to Israel from Denver was not a temporary one for the Lewins. “Charles said he would go back to America [if I asked him to], but that it would be like living death,” said Peggy. “I was married to him, and a living death was not an option, so we stayed.”

  With his broken Hebrew and a heavy American accent, Danny Lewin began his sophomore year at Ort, a science and technology high school on the campus of Hebrew University. The transition from his easy, all-American adolescence to an Israeli high school with few English speakers was a troubled one. While he eventually made friends at Ort and earned high marks in all his classes, Lewin didn’t quickly fit in with his classmates, tough sabras (native-born Israelis) who were already preparing, mentally and physically, for compulsory military service after graduation. In many ways, Lewin had lost his adolescence.

  In the spring of 1985, while waiting for his school bus, Lewin met a twenty-one-year-old neighbor named Brad Rephen. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Rephen had moved to Israel with his younger brother to study at Hebrew University. He planned a return to New York—until the day his parents called him from Ben Gurion airport to tell him that they had decided to make aliyah. Rephen, who spoke both English and Hebrew fluently and had a group of international friends, was quick to connect with Lewin. Rephen was pursuing a degree in political science at the university, but spent most of his time training for service in the Israeli army at a local hot spot: Samson’s Gym. An American-style fitness center, the recently opened gym was already generating buzz in Jerusalem, attracting an imposing mix of buff American and Israeli men. Rephen told Lewin about the gym and invited him to come by. At the time, he didn’t think the baby-faced teenager would have the chutzpah (courage) to show up at the gym on his own. Days later, he spotted Lewin in line at Samson’s, signing up for a membership. Although he had not a trace of tough guy in his face, Lewin was pure strength from head to toe. Of average weight and height, he was muscular and agile, the kind of guy who left a bruise when he playfully slugged someone in the shoulder.

  Still stinging from the involuntary move, Lewin was struggling to fit in at school. Among olim hadashim (new immigrants) to Israel, there’s an unspoken contest to see who is the first to learn Hebrew and adopt Israeli mannerisms. Lewin had accomplished neither, so he made Samson’s his home away from home as an outlet for his frustration. His new friends remember him training so hard that his physical strength multiplied. He worked out until he was blue in the face and his muscles failed, all while sweating and sputtering commands to push himself. “He resented the fact that his parents had taken him out of his environment,” Rephen said. “But he wasn’t angry at them, he was angry at his situation. He needed to find himself again, and he did it at Samson’s.” Rephen still remembers Lewin’s efforts to fit in with the confident, sometimes brash Samson’s crew, which included Lewin sharing charming, but likely embellished, tales of his romantic conquests back in Colorado.

  Although he didn’t always attend school, Lewin aced it, sailing through his classes at Ort without too much effort. Friends say he often skipped classes to spend time at Samson’s, but if he did, Peggy and Charles Lewin were never aware of it. In fact, Peggy Lewin says she remembered Danny working well into the night on projects for physics and science, masterful constructions that earned him top marks. Not surprisingly, Lewin didn’t advertise his intellectual prowess at Samson’s, where you rose to the status of cool by brute force, not brains. But he was always learning, and friends recall moments when they realized Lewin was a force to be reckoned with outside the gym.

  “I had Shabbat dinner with his family a few times, and that’s when it struck me that they were all really unique,” noted Ronen Sarig, who also met Lewin at the gym. “I think Danny was often trying to dumb himself down to fit in, but when I met his family, I realized his parents were really trying to guide their kids to something big and important in life, and that Danny and his brothers were really smart.”

  But Charles and Peggy Lewin were also working hard, pushing to get their careers in a new country off the ground. And while Danny’s anger at his parents diminished over time, he didn’t want to be at home much. In his own way, he emancipated himself from his family and their French Hill apartment, spending all his spare time outside of school at Samson’s.

  By the time he was sixteen, Lewin could bench press more than 300 pounds, a noteworthy weight for someone of his age and build, making him somewhat of a spectacle at Samson’s. In the summer of 1986, a twenty-two-year-old college student from Beverly Hills named Marco Greenberg arrived at Samson’s to sign up for a membership. While waiting in line, another American student named Roger Abramson grabbed Greenberg by the arm and said, “Come here, you’ve go to see this kid.”

  Despite a six-year age difference, Greenberg and Lewin became fast friends. The two had many things in common: childhood years in Colorado, a love for American culture and a keen intellect, to name a few. To Lewin, Greenberg was no doubt a reminder of home. But he was also evidence of the fact that Israel, for many, was an appealing place to live. Greenberg had come to Israel voluntarily to study for a summer at Hebrew University before his last semester at University of California, Los Angeles. Raised in Colorado and southern Los Angeles, Greenberg was tall and good-looking, and practically exuded California cool. Pursuing a double major in history and political science, he, like Lewin, had a passion for news and politics. Greenberg was struck by how much wiser, and more mature, Lewin seemed than his sixteen years. He could see Lewin’s struggle as he continued to straddle two worlds, but he also saw in him the makings of an extraordinary friend. “He had this amazing energy and warmth,” Greenberg recalled. “And an incredible ability to make people feel good about themselves.”

  Lewin’s good cheer could have been one of the reasons he didn’t assimilate quickly. Israelis are notorious skeptics, priding themselves on a serious, “no bullshit” attitude that often eschews small talk and superficial expressions of enthusiasm in favor of communicating with efficiency and candor. Lewin actually liked the Israeli way, though, often mocking American waitresses, for example, for their forced joviality. But in many ways, Lewin embodied American optimism. He was a hugger, a high-fiver, and a constant smiler. Even his writing style could not contain his natural gusto; he often ended sentences with multiple exclamation points, a stylistic choice he never surrendered, even years later when drafting business-related e-mails.

  Together, Greenberg and Lewin spent the summer of 1986, and the first half of 1997 (when Greenberg returned to Israel after college graduation) exploring Israel in between workouts at the gym—hitting the beaches of Tel Aviv, courting exotic Mediterranean girls, and taking day trips into the desert or mountains. “It was like a shouk (marketplace), literally and figuratively,” Greenberg said. “There we were, two American guys strolling the streets, hopping in taxis, traveling, meeting girls.” Still, it wasn’t yet clear to Lewin’s friends, or even his family, that he would one day be capable of deeply un
derstanding the high-level math and computer science expected at MIT. “He was wickedly funny, and outside his tough, macho image, he was such a nice character,” testified Ronen Sarig. “But if you asked me at the time if I thought he was a genius, I would have said no.” In part, this was because Lewin—like almost all Israeli teenagers—wasn’t talking about college as his next step. He had his eyes on the army.

  Lewin’s interest in the army began at Samson’s, where he often lifted weights alongside commandos just back from missions with stunning tales of jumping out of airplanes, trudging miles in the desert, and surviving firefights with terrorists. The Samson’s crew not only talked terrorism, they lived it. Rephen still recalls the frequent bomb scares on Ben Yehuda Street; in fact, he once heard the explosion of a yellow duffel bag he’d seen at the bus stop where he and Lewin often met.

  At age eighteen, all Israelis begin a minimum of two years of army service. Even though military service wasn’t required for a non-native, Lewin hadn’t spent two years building the physical strength of a warrior and fighting to integrate into Israeli life just to leave without joining up, too. With his classmates and friends facing military training, Lewin didn’t hesitate. School, he told friends, could wait. Lewin dropped his training at the gym down to just two days a week to shed some of his muscle mass in preparation for the army. To increase his stamina, he also began running. He often ran at night, and Rephen still remembered the sight of Lewin jogging the streets of Jerusalem at dusk for hours at a time. If he was going to be in the army, Lewin told friends, he was going to be in one of the best fighting units.