He served during World War II and graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1946.
His father, Herman, assisted Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan with his founding of the Jewish Reconstructionist movement in the 1930s.
Defense and Domestic Needs: Contest for Tomorrow, which aired on Public Broadcast Laboratory, won a Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award.
The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis looked at the activities of the CIA leading up to the Iran–Contra affair.
With his son, Marc Levin, and his production partner Daphne Pinkerson, he made Thug Life in D.C. about the lives of four prisoners in Washington.