Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Jewish legal trailblazer, died on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah 5781. A time when Jews reflect on the past and plan the future. In the Jewish tradition, a person who dies on the holiday is considered a tsaddik—a righteous person.
R.B.G., is the first woman and first Jew, to be honored in death as she was in life, in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. How appropriate.
R.B.G. was an equalizer who fought for a more equal America for all Americans. Male and female, of all colors and sexual persuasion. Who insisted both women and men be given “full citizenship stature—equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society.”
A legal advocate who had personally experienced discrimination as a top lawyer. Denied jobs at top New York law firms and a clerkship on the Supreme Court, because she was a woman. A woman who persuaded an all-male Supreme Court to apply the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to sex-based discrimination.
A woman who was a wife, mother and grandmother.
A woman who was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 96-3 in 1993, only the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
A woman who became an icon to women of all ages. The embodiment of “hope for an empowered future.”
A woman who thought it was “really dumb” for Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the national anthem.
A woman who was woman enough to later apologize for her Kaepernick remark.
A woman who in 2016, during an interview, called President Trump a “faker.”
A woman who was woman enough to say her Trump remark was “ill advised.”
A woman whose intellect was respected by men and women alike.
A woman who is already sorely missed.
