 SEPTEMBER 24 • 2020 | 19

T

he evening Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
died was Erev Rosh Hashanah. As 
the sorrowful news trickled out 
to the world, thousands of mourners in 
Washington, D.C., convened on the steps 
of the U.S. Supreme Court, the institution 
Ginsburg changed forever in the 27 years 
she served on its bench. There, among a 
display of flowers and candles, liberals and 
conservatives, Jews and gentiles alike, recited 
the Mourner’
s Kaddish. 
Some Detroit-area congregations, at the 
start of Rosh Hashanah worship the next 
morning, also offered prayers and condo-
lences for her. A fitting act for one of the 
most influential Jewish leaders of our time.
According to Jewish tradition, one who 
dies on Rosh Hashanah is considered a tzad-
dik, a person of great righteousness. There 
should be no doubt, even among the most 
politically conservative members of our 
Jewish community, that Justice Ginsburg 
was uniquely righteous. Her appointment 
to the Court in 1993 was historic in and of 
itself — she was the first Jewish woman and 
only the second woman ever to become a 
justice. But she put in the work, too, success-
fully arguing to overturn gender discrimina-
tion across many facets of American life.
In word and deed, in her jurispru-
dence and home life, Justice Ginsburg 
was committed to core Jewish values of 
egalitarianism, charity and lovingkind-
ness. Generations of women in America 
have grown up admiring “The Notorious 
RBG” and her persuasive court arguments; 
tireless work ethic; refusal to be shaped or 
turned away by men who believed she didn’
t 
belong; hard-won friendships even with 
those, like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, 

with whom she bitterly disagreed; and men-
torships of young female lawyers. Knowing 
that Ginsburg did all this while proudly 
displaying her Jewish identity makes that 
journey all the sweeter. 
Here in Detroit, Robert Sedler, a distin-
guished professor of constitutional law at 
Wayne State University and member of 
Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park, has years of 
history with Ginsburg. “She was a pioneer 
— I cannot emphasize that enough — a pio-
neer in developing the constitutional doc-
trine of gender equality,
” Sedler said.
In 1971, Sedler was litigating civil rights 
cases out of the American Civil Liberties 
Union’
s Kentucky chapter the same year 
Ginsburg litigated Reed v. Reed, a landmark 
Supreme Court ruling that determined the 
14th Amendment forbids sex and gender 
discrimination. Sedler was in contact with 
Ginsburg regarding how the ruling could 
be applied to his own arguments. He was 
able to use her precedent to win multiple 
Kentucky gender discrimination cases, 
including one overturning a state law man-
dating that a learner’
s permit for a beginning 
driver must be signed by the driver’
s father.
Nearly four decades later, Sedler was able 
to interview Justice Ginsburg at the 2010 
national convention of the Tau Epsilon Rho 
Law Society, a historically Jewish law frater-
nity. Ginsburg was receiving the Benjamin 
Cardozo Award, named after another influ-
ential Jewish Supreme Court justice.
At dinner before the ceremony, Sedler 
recalled that Ginsburg was “so gracious at 
the table. We talked about family, grandchil-
dren and all those things.
” 
 Ginsburg used the occasion of the con-
ference to take her grandchildren to the zoo 

— wearing a big hat so that no one would 
recognize her.
I believe RBG’
s work over the years has 
almost certainly helped me become a better 
Jew. With Yom Kippur only days away, I’
ve 
been thinking through my actions over the 
past year and trying to atone for my own 
sins against others, including things I said or 
actions I took to belittle, dismiss or other-
wise cause pain to women and other margin-
alized people. These are things that modern 
society can recognize as sins in large part 
because of Ginsburg’
s work over the decades 
demonstrating they are indeed unjust. 
The road ahead without Ginsburg will 
be dark and difficult. The Supreme Court 
vacancy created by her death has opened 
up the potential for yet another bitter, par-
tisan battle at the tail end of a historically 
polarizing election year. But before we allow 
ourselves to be caught up in that, we should 
remember the human values, and the Jewish 
values, Justice Ginsburg stood for. She 
devoted her life to making this great coun-
try more equitable for all, and she did it by 
changing hearts and minds, while working 
within the established rules and protocols of 
the legal system. 
How and why did she do this for so long? 
Many have reacted in stunned disbelief that 
so much of our nation’
s political and judicial 
landscape — indeed, our national character 
— could have been resting on the shoulders 
of an 87-year-old bubbie. But this is maybe 
not so surprising to us Jews. We know just 
how determined our bubbies can be. May 
her memory be a blessing. 

Look for additional coverage of Justice Ginsburg 
and her Detroit connections at thejewishnews.com.

Kaddish for RBG

The iconic Justice’
s death is an occasion for national Jewish mourning.

ANDREW LAPIN EDITOR

DAVID SACHS

FAR LEFT: Chief Justice 
William Rehnquist swearing 
in Ginsburg as an Associate 
Justice of the Supreme 
Court, as her husband Martin 
Ginsburg and President 
Clinton watch. 
THIS PAGE: Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg at Amherst College 
in Massachusetts, Oct. 3, 
2019. Robert Sedler holds 
a photo of him and Justice 
Ginsburg that he treasures.

VIA NOTORIOUS RBG FACEBOOK

ERIN CLARK FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY 

IMAGES VIA JTA

