By Sarah Ogince
One of the many handwritten notes Justice Ginsberg penned to Rabbi Gurary
Writing by hand, on stationery bearing the seal of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recalled her childhood as a young Jewish girl in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
My mother would smile to think of me lighting candles, and saying the brucha, something she made very special in our home...
Chanuka was a happy holiday for us, not the least because of the gelt my grandfather gave to the grandchildren, for which we lined up from eldest to youngest.
A THOUSAND THANKS!
The thanks were for a silver menorah and candles, delivered to the justice’s chambers by the note’s recipient, Rabbi Nosson Gurary, the Chabad representative to Buffalo, and regional director of Chabad Houses in Upstate New York.
Ginsburg, who passed away at the age of 87, was memorialized as a brilliant jurist, a tireless advocate for women’s rights, and a liberal icon with rock-star status—the Notorious RBG.
After the Guardian’s obituary stated that she had “abandoned her religion” at the age of seventeen, there was an immediate backlash from American Jews.
They pointed to the obvious manifestations of the justice’s Jewish pride: there was a mezuzah on the door of her Supreme Court chambers; she had personally lobbied for the court to close on the High Holidays; and there was the poster on her wall with the verse from Deuteronomy, “Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof.” Justice, justice, shall you pursue.
The Guardian subsequently issued a correction: Though the justice had moved away from observance, “she nevertheless remained deeply committed to her Jewish identity.”
UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIPS
Rabbi Gurary became a witness to Ginsburg’s Jewish life in 2003, when they were introduced by Justice Antonin Scalia.
As an adjunct professor since 1971, Rabbi Gurary taught classes that were part of the SUNY Buffalo catalogue: Jewish mysticism and ethics, Chasidic philosophy, and Jewish law.
In 2001, through a contact at the law school, he met Scalia (“He was very fond of Jewish law”), and in 2005, Rabbi Gurary created the National Institute for Judaic Law, an academic organization that would consider current cases before the high court in the light of Jewish law (halachah).
The project was launched with a dinner at the Supreme Court attended by Scalia, Stephen Breyer, and Ginsburg. Rabbi Gurary remained in contact with the justices afterwards—they learned to expect a package from him before the Jewish holidays.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
In 1930s Flatbush, the Bader family’s primary focus was integration into American society. Ruth’s mother, Celia Bader, had grown up speaking Yiddish in her home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Intelligent and strong-willed, Celia steered Ruth toward a life of academic achievement.
But Judaism was important to Celia, too. The family belonged to a Conservative synagogue in Flatbush, and Ruth attended Hebrew school and Jewish summer camp for her entire childhood. According to Ginsburg biographer Jane Sherron De Hart, Celia lit candles for Shabbat every Friday and brought up a separate set of dishes from the basement for Passover.
As a child and young adult, Ruth fulfilled her mother’s demands in both spheres, excelling in public school and at summer camp, where she delivered sermons and led Shabbat prayers. But that would change after her mother’s death in 1950, when seventeen-year-old Ruth drifted away from Jewish ritual observance.
Yet, in her own way, Ginsburg sought to synthesize the values her mother had instilled. She championed the rights of women and minorities, a course that she acknowledged was inspired by her experience with antisemitism during the Second World War, and by the idea of tikkun olam that she had absorbed in her youth. In 1993, when she was nominated to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg paid tribute to her mother, whom she described as “the bravest and strongest person I have ever known.”
DEEPENING ENGAGEMENT
On the Supreme Court, Ginsburg took pains to define herself as a Jew in a way that she had never done before. “I am a judge born, raised, and proud of being a Jew,” she wrote in an essay for the American Jewish Committee in 1996. “The demand for justice runs through the entirety of Jewish tradition. I hope . . . I will have the courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.”
Rabbi Gurary recalls his first meeting with the justice in her chambers, when, he says, she proudly pointed out that she had a mezuzah on her door. “It was a prominent, silver mezuzah.”
After her husband’s death in 2010, Ginsburg began speaking to Jewish audiences more frequently. In 2015, she co-authored an essay about the role of women in the Passover story, intended to be used as an insert in the Haggadah.
And then there were her notes to Rabbi Gurary, which reveal a more intimate side of the justice’s Jewish self. “My dear Rabbi,” she wrote on March 31, 2014:
World’s best matzahs arrived in good time for Passover. I will bring one box to the family seder. . . . It is a time that revives memories of seders at my grandparents’ home and of the dishes my mother brought up every year.
“She wrote to me openly, personally, in her own handwriting,” Rabbi Gurary says. “She wanted me to know how she identifies with the Jewish tradition, that she feels fond of it. The gifts brought back memories of home.”
Certainly the rabbi’s gifts provided an opportunity for Ginsburg to practice a core tenet of Jewish tradition—one that her mother had pursued with passion. On receiving a Purim gift in 2004, she wrote, it was “the ideal way to make the holiday understood and appreciated.” She was, she told the rabbi, passing it on to her grandchildren.
Excerpts from an article which appeared in the Lubavitch International Magazine
