Born June 19, 1942, in
Brooklyn, New York, Levine was the eldest of three children of businessman Bernard Levine and homemaker Gertrude Cohen Levine. The family moved to
Great Neck on
Long Island when he was a child, and he graduated from
Great Neck North High School in 1959. He attended
Wesleyan University, graduating with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in literature in 1963. He continued his education at the Russian Institute of
Columbia University, where he received a
Master of Arts degree in Slavic languages and literature in 1966. While at Columbia, he received a
Fulbright scholarship, which enabled him to study at the
University of Warsaw and the
University of Krakow (now Jagiellonian University) in
Poland. ==Career==