Bernard Salomon Lewinsky is a Salvadoran-born American physician and medical researcher. He is also a photographer and many of his photographs are displayed at medical offices. He also organized a legal defense fund for his daughter Monica during an inquiry into her relationship with President Bill Clinton.
Medical career
Lewinsky is a board-certified radiation oncologist who is among the top 15% of breast cancer researchers in terms of publication volume, according to Vitals.com. He is the President and owner of West Hills Radiation Therapy Center. Lewinsky is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology and also serves on the Medical Advisory Board of The Wellness Community Valley/Ventura, a cancer support organisation. Lewinsky has studied non-surgical cancer treatments that aim to reduce the number of treatments that patients receive. He has also partnered with a veterinarian oncologist to help treat animals with cancer. Lewinsky has published a number of medical papers in collaboration with several other scientists that focus on breast cancer. He has also been published in various textbooks. His earliest job in oncology was a residency at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, California.
Photography
Lewinsky is also an accomplished photographer. His photographs are displayed in a "healing art gallery" at the West Hills radiation therapy center and in 20 medical offices across the country. Lewinsky has published a book of his photographs titled Nature - Our Healing Partner that is primarily aimed for his patients and the proceeds from the sale of which go to the American Cancer Society. In January 2002, a number of his works were featured at the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in an exhibit called "The Healing Arts". Split up into two separate parts, the first "focus entirely on work that Lewinsky has done for his treatment center", while the second featured "work borrowed from hospitals across the country"." In order to learn how to be a better photographer, Lewinsky took a number of workshops from famous photographers such as Howard Bond, John Sexton, Ray McSavaney, and Tom Morse. Lewinsky has stated that his main idol that he tried to emulate in his early photography efforts was Ansel Adams.
Personal life
Lewinsky's parents, Susi and George Lewinsky, were German Jews who left Germany in the 1920s, and settled in El Salvador. His mother was from Hamburg. Both of them were highly connected to the arts, with his mother being a landscape painter and his father a violinist. Lewinsky was born in San Salvador. During his childhood, Lewinsky was largely interested in photography but, when the family moved to the United States in 1957 when Lewinsky was 14, his interests began to converge onto medicine instead. His interest in photography renewed in 1987, when he began utilizing photographs in his radiology practice and going to a number of photography workshops. In 1976, he joined the Sinai Temple. Lewinsky first attended the University of California, Berkeley, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in biology. He then attended the University of Oregon in order to receive a Master of Science in biology in 1965. Finally, he received a medical degree in 1969 at the University of California, Irvine and later had his medical internship at the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. After his internship was complete, he worked for a period of two years with the army as Chief of Radiation Therapy Services at the Letterman Army Hospital. He received a Commendation Medal for his work with the army. After all of his schooling and training was complete, he began working in 1977 at the Western Tumor Medical Group as a junior assistant. After a year, in 1978, Lewinsky became a partner with the group. Soon after, in the same year, he helped open a new facility in West Hills and yet another facility in 1990 in Valencia. He has worked with the group ever since and became the president of it in 1994. After the other partners in the Group sold their partnership to Lewinsky, he became the sole proprietor. Lewinsky married Marcia Kaye Vilensky, his first wife, in 1969. They had two children—Monica, in 1973, and Michael, in 1977. The couple divorced in 1987. From 199597, his daughter Monica was involved in a relationship with Bill Clinton. Lewinsky organized a legal defense fund for his daughter, announcing it on the Today Show. In a 1998 CNN interview, he described Monica's defense attorney William H. Ginsburg as a "close friend", and spoke out against government and media scrutiny of his daughter.
