22 minute read
RBG’s Jewish Moments
opera called “Scalia v. Ginsburg.” They also loved food, and along with their spouses, shared meals and even traveled together. While their personalities were different – Scalia was more voluble and Ginsburg more reserved – their respect and affection for each other were never in question. No case, no matter how contentious, ever came between them.
How did they do it? And how can society emulate their example?
The answer comes not just from the nobility of spirit that both embodied, but from mutual values that transcended ideological differences. They could care about each other while also disagreeing because of a shared morality.
In his new book titled Morality, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, explains that people act in this manner because they see themselves “as part of the same framework of virtues and values, rules and responsibilities, codes and customs, conventions and constraints.”
As Sachs points out, “morality achieves something almost miraculous, and fundamental to human achievement and liberty. It creates trust. It means that to the extent that we are part of the same moral community, we can work together without constantly being on guard against violence, betrayal, exploitation or deception. The stronger the bonds of community, the more powerful the force of trust, and the more we can achieve together.”
This is a powerful lesson that those two judges, each revered by their own side of the political divide, understand intuitively.
The trouble with all too many Americans right now – on both the right and the left–is that they are so drenched with hatred of political opponents that they no longer see them as part of the same community. Those who view things differently are foes not merely to be defeated, but to be delegitimized and destroyed.
Scalia and Ginsburg taught us that we can still be friends while strongly disagreeing with each other. Engaging in civil discourse between left and right may no longer seem possible. Being willing to agree to disagree, and to respect each other’s opinions and credit each other with good motives, has gone out of style with unknowable consequences for the future of American democracy.
We can learn from the two judges that civility and mutual respect don’t require agreement as much as commonalities at the core. Instead of using Ginsburg’s death as an excuse to make these divisions worse with threats and insults, we should be remembering her example and stop demonizing our opponents. May both their memories be for a blessing.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS–Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_ tobin.
From camp ‘rabbi’ to pursuing justice: How Judaism animated Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life
BY BEN SALES
(JTA) – In its obituary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Guardian wrote that the late Jewish Supreme Court justice “abandoned her religion.”
That couldn’t be more wrong.
While Ginsburg, who died Friday, Sept. 18, at age 87, was not known for her ritual observance, she spoke frequently about how Jewish values inspired her, and she was active in Jewish causes and with Jewish organizations.
As Ginsburg would note in speeches, she was the only justice with a mezuzah affixed to her office door (presented to her as a gift from Shlamith, a Jewish all-girls school in Brooklyn, New York). A poster on the wall read “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof,” the Hebrew injunction from the Torah meaning “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” She also once wore that line woven into one of her jabots, or collars worn on her Supreme Court robes.
“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 the Jewish tradition. I hope, in my years on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, I will have the strength and courage to remain constant in the service of that demand.”
Here’s a timeline of the most Jewish moments and motifs in the life of RBG.
As a teenager, she acted as her camp’s “junior rabbi” and wrote an essay about the importance of remembering the Holocaust.
Ginsburg, raised in Brooklyn and attended the East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue, spent summers she at Camp Che-Ne-Wah in the Adirondacks, where she was unofficially called her camp’s “junior rabbi” and would lead Shabbat prayers.
Barely a year after the Holocaust ended, a teenage Ginsburg wrote an essay in her synagogue bulletin titled “One People” about the importance of a world free of prejudice. She republished the essay in her 2016 book My Own Words.
“We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps,” she wrote. “There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance.”
She was disillusioned with Jewish observance at age 17 when women weren’t counted in a prayer quorum at her mother’s shiva.
Presaging her pioneering work for women’s rights, Ginsburg would relate that she stopped feeling connected to Jewish ritual at 17 because of the absence of a minyan at her mother’s shiva, as women were not counted. Even though there was “a house full of women,” she said in a 2008 speech at Washington, D.C.’s Sixth & I Synagogue, no prayer was held because 10 men were not present.
In her college dorm, she felt discriminated against when all the Jewish women were placed on the same floor.
In her freshman dormitory at Cornell University (from which Ginsburg graduated in 1954), Ginsburg discovered that she and the other women in her corridor were all Jewish. She told a documentary she felt that they were placed together “so we wouldn’t contaminate” other students.
She sent their kids to Hebrew school.
Speaking to the Jewish Telegraph Agency in 1993, when Ginsburg was nominated for the Supreme Court, her husband, Martin Ginsburg, described the family as “not wildly observant,” though he said they went to a traditional Passover Seder with relatives. Later in life, in 2015, Ginsburg co-authored a feminist reinterpretation of the Passover story with Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt.
The Ginsburgs sent their kids to Hebrew school when they lived in the New York area, but Martin Ginsburg told JTA that they didn’t join a synagogue when they moved to Washington, as the kids had grown up.
She visited Israel in the 1970s for a conference on Jewish law – and kept going back.
As an attorney, while arguing a series of landmark women’s rights cases before the Supreme Court in the ’70s, Ginsburg also “actively participated” in the American Jewish Congress’ Commission on Law and Social Action. Also during that decade, she attended a conference in Israel discussing the position of women under secular and halachic laws in Israel and America.
For decades after that trip, Ginsburg continued to travel to the country and comment on its legal system. In 2000, she was honored along with other American and Israeli Jewish feminists at the Knesset. Five years later she was part of a group that advised Israel not to adopt an Americanstyle constitution because it would give the country’s judges less freedom. At an event on that subject, she said, “I admire Israel and I admire Aharon Barak,” Israel’s former chief justice.
More recently, in 2017, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Genesis Prize Foundation in Israel. She was supposed to receive the Genesis Prize itself, known as the “Jewish Nobel,” but declined because she feared that the $1 million cash prize could violate ethics laws.
When a soldier wanted to wear a kippah in the military, Ginsburg stood up for him in court.
In 1984, S. Simcha Goldman, a Jewish soldier, fought in court against a military policy that banned him from wearing a yarmulke on duty. Ginsburg’s appeals court declined to hear his case, but Ginsburg dissented from that decision.
“A military commander has now declared intolerable the yarmulka Dr. Goldman has worn without incident throughout his several years of military service,” she wrote. “At the least, the declaration suggests ‘callous indifference’ to Dr. Goldman’s religious faith.”
In her confirmation hearings, she spoke about how her Jewish heritage impacted her views.
Appearing before the Senate in 1993, Ginsburg said her ancestors “had the foresight to leave the old country when Jewish ancestry and faith meant exposure to pogroms and denigration of one’s human worth.” During questioning, she spoke about how country clubs would bar admission to Jews and said, “One couldn’t help but be sensitive to discrimination, being a Jew in America during World War II.”
She stayed involved in Holocaust remembrance.
Ginsburg was active with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1993, months after she joined the court, she presented the museum’s Medal of Remembrance to Emilie Schindler, widow of Oskar Schindler, whose story of rescuing Jews during the Holocaust had recently been told in the film “Schindler’s List.”
In 2004, she gave a speech at the museum on Holocaust Remembrance Day on the role of the law in preventing atrocity. “In striving to drain dry the waters of prejudice and oppression, we must rely on measures of our own creation – upon the wisdom of our laws and the decency of our institutions, upon our reasoning minds
Briefs
Film agencies in Israel and UAE reach cooperation deal
(JNS) The Abu Dhabi Film Commission of the United Arab Emirates and the Israeli Film Fund announced a cooperation agreement on Monday. A government agency, the Abu Dhabi Film Commission said the agreement would lead to training programs for film and TV co-production, in addition to joint film festivals, reported the AP. Under the agreement, Emirati students will study in Jerusalem at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. It is the latest news of warming ties since the UAE and Bahrain signed peace agreements last week to normalize relations with the Jewish state.
New York will erect statue in Brooklyn to honor RBG
(JTA) – New York state will honor the life and legacy of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a statue in her made the announcement on Saturday, Sept. 19 less than a day after Ginsburg died. Cuomo’s office said he would appoint a commission to select an artist and set a location selection process into motion.
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg selflessly pursued truth and justice in a world of division, giving voice to the voiceless and uplifting those who were pushed aside by forces of hate and indifference,” Cuomo said. “As a lawyer, jurist, and professor, she redefined gender equity and civil rights and ensured America lived up to her founding ideals – she was a monumental figure of equality, and we can all agree that she deserves a monument in her honor.” He added: “While the family of New York mourns Justice Ginsburg’s death, we remember proudly that she started her incredible journey right here in Brooklyn. Her legacy will live on in the progress she created for our society, and this statue will serve as a physical reminder of her many contributions to the America we know today and as an inspiration for those who will continue to build on her immense body of work for generations to come.”
Cuomo also announced on Saturday that landmarks across the state would be lit in blue in Ginsburg’s memory, since “Blue is the color of justice and was reportedly Justice Ginsburg’s favorite color.”
RBG’s family to accept honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion U
(JNS) In his letter inviting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburn, to receive a 2020 honorary doctorate, Ben Gurion University Presient Professor Daniel Chamovitz wrote, “From fighting for your own right to excel as a lawyer in a male-dominated profession to becoming a human-rights advocate for all people and fulfilling the demanding role of U.S. Supreme Court Justice, your courage to follow your inner moral compass has repeatedly shown the world how thoughtful, seasoned, compassionate judgment is a necessary guidepost for democratic rule.”
Ginsburg was planning to travel this year to accept the degree, but the ceremony was postponed due to COVID-19. Instead, her family will be invited to Israel to accept the degree on her behalf at a future date of mutual convenience. birthplace of Brooklyn. Gov. Andrew Cuomo
AABGU CEO Doug Seserman said “our board and staff share in the world’s grief over this heroic and fearless Jewish trailblazer. The world lost a guiding light. Now we must find our own. RIP RBG. May her memory be for a blessing.”
In UN speech, Trump touts Mideast accomplishments
(JNS) In his speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, President Donald Trump touted his accomplishments on Iran and Mideast normalization deals with Israel. In a pre-recorded address from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room to the 75th U.N. General Assembly, which is mostly virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump mentioned withdrawing the United States from the “terrible” 2015 Iran nuclear deal and imposing “crippling sanctions on the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.” He also mentioned the United States having “obliterated the ISIS caliphate 100 percent,” and eliminating Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and “the world’s top terrorist, Qassem Soleimani.” Al-Baghdadi killed himself and two children by detonating a suicide vest during a raid of his compound by U.S. forces in northwest Syria in October 2019, while Soleimani, general of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was targeted in a U.S. airstrike on Jan. 3 at Baghdad International Airport.
Trump also mentioned the Sept. 4 economic deal between Serbia and Kosovo in which the latter has agreed to formally recognize the State of Israel and open an embassy in Jerusalem. Serbia has also agreed to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The president hailed what he called “a landmark breakthrough” with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which signed agreements last week to normalize relations with Israel. He reiterated that the deals represent “the dawn of the new Middle East.”
“By taking a different approach, we have achieved different outcomes–far superior outcomes. We took an approach, and the approach worked,” continued Trump. “We intend to deliver more peace agreements shortly, and I have never been more optimistic for the future of the region. There is no blood in the sand. Those days are, hopefully, over.”
Hong Kong cosmetics maker features blush named for Anne Frank
(JTA) – A cosmetics maker in Hong Kong featured a product named for Anne Frank in its online catalog. The Dream Like Anne liquid blush was part of a line of products by the cosmetics maker, Woke Up Like This, named for women deemed to be inspiring, including Melinda Gates, Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo. The product was removed from the catalog last week following complaints that naming the blush for the Holocaust teenage diarist was disrespectful. The Hong Kong edition of the magazine Time Out apologized for an article that featured the product. “We understand and recognize the insensitivities within this article, and that the inclusion of this product came across as disrespectful of Anne Frank and what she represents,” the apology said. “We sincerely apologize for the distress that this piece has caused.”
Polish parliament votes to ban kosher and halal meat for export
(JTA) – Poland has moved a step closer to terminating its $1.8 billion industry of kosher and halal meat for export – one day after a parliamentary committee had removed language about a ban in an animal rights bill. On Thursday night, Sept. 17, the parliament’s lower house, the Sejm, voted in favor of the Law on Animal Protection. Among the 460 lawmakers, 375 backed the measure. The text on the ban was reintroduced, Tok FM reported. The bill must still pass the Senate to go into effect. The law, whose final text has not been published, bans the slaughter of animals without prior stunning. There is an exception for meat produced for the needs of religious minorities in Poland, according to the PAP news agency. Meat producers affected by the ban will be compensated by the government, which will also determine the precise conditions of who may conduct slaughter without stunning, the law says.
Poland has fewer than 20,000 Jews and a similarly sized Muslim minority but is nonetheless a major exporter of kosher and halal meat. Opponents of slaughter without stunning, which is a prerequisite for halal and kosher meat, say its cruel. Proponents of the practice say its relatively painless.
Internet giants urged to remove French rapper’s antisemitic songs
(JTA) – France’s oldest anti-racism watchdog group called on internet giants to remove from their platforms newly released hit rap songs that critics say are antisemitic. The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, or LICRA, urged YouTube, Google, Apple Music and Spotify to remove works by Issa Lorenzo Diakhaté. The 28-year-old rapper, also known as Freeze Corleone, engages in “antisemitism, conspiracy theories, glorification of Hitler and the Third Reich and the terrorist Mullah Omar,” a former leader of the Taliban, LICRA wrote last week on Twitter.
Corleone sings in his 10th album, “The Phantom Threat,” about wanting his children to “live like Jewish investors” and of being “determined like Adolf.” He also sings “F*** a Rothchild, f*** a Rockefeller, I come determined like Adolf in the ’30s” and “couldn’t care less about the Shoah.” Corleone’s album has enjoyed considerable commercial success, selling about 15,000 copies since its release on Sept. 11 – a date some believe he chose deliberately. The album’s 17 songs have been played more than 5 million times on Spotify. Corleone has a long history of similar statements in his previous albums, the magazine showed.
Separately, a Paris court last week sentenced the well-known far-right Holocaust denier Hervé Lalin to 17 months in prison for inciting hatred against Jews online, AFP reported.
Also last week, a different court fined another Holocaust denier, Alain Soral, some $6,350 for blaming Jews for the fire that ravaged the Notre Dame church in the French capital in 2019.
Indian kickboxing champ moving to Israel with plans to represent his new land
(JTA) – A mixed martial arts and kickboxing champion from India is moving to Israel, and he plans to represent the Jewish state in international competition. Obed Hrangchal, 26, who has won national medals in India in several martial arts, is religiously observant and a member of the Bnei Menashe Jewish community. He is set to immigrate with his parents and sister right after the High Holidays. “I have always dreamt of making aliya to the Land of Israel and I am very excited at the prospect of doing so,” he said in a statement released by Shavei Israel, an organization that helps lost communities of Jews or descendants of Jews to rediscover their roots and come to Israel. Hrangchal plans to serve in the Israeli army.
He and his family were the only Jews in the village of Thinghlun, in the state of Mizoram, before selling their home and farmland in 2013 to move to the capital city
of Aizawl while awaiting the opportunity to immigrate to Israel. The Bnei Menashe are believed to be descended from the biblical tribe of Manasseh, one of the 10 Lost Tribes exiled from the Land of Israel more than 2,700 years ago. In 2005, then-Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar endorsed the Bnei Menashe’s claim to Jewish ancestry, but required them to convert to Orthodox Judaism. More than 4,000 Bnei Menashe have made aliyah in the past two decades. Another 6,500 remain in India but want to move to Israel.
At a meeting in August, Israel’s minister of aliyah and absorption, Penina TamanuShata, told Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund that in cooperation with the Interior Ministry, she was moving ahead with the aliyah of 722 Bnei Menashe, including Hrangchal and his family.
‘Sapiens’ graphic novel coming out in October
(JTA) – For anyone intimidated to start reading Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s comprehensive book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” help is on the way: A graphic novel version will be available next month. “Sapiens: A Graphic History” will be narrated by a caricature of Harari and reimagines human evolution as a reality television show. It’s the first of four planned volumes covering the material in the bestselling book, which has sold 16 million copies in 60 languages worldwide. The aim is to interest readers who don’t usually engage with science and history, according to Harari’s website.
The nonfiction book charts the course of the development of humans from the prehistoric era to modernity. It was published originally in Hebrew as a textbook for Harari’s students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Comics artists David Vandermeulen as co-writer and Daniel Casanave as the illustrator collaborated on the graphic novel.
In 2019, Harari and his husband, Itzik Yahav, co-founded Sapienship: a social impact company, with projects in the fields of entertainment and education. Sapienship tries to focus public conversation on today’s global challenges.
Armani Hotel Dubai to host first kosher restaurant in UAE
(JNS) On the heels of the Abraham Accords signed in Washington between Israel. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates comes Armani/Kaf, the first kosher-certified dining destination in the UAW, which officially opened its doors on Sept. 17.
The 40-seat pop-up dinner venue on the ground floor of the award-winning Burj Khalifa and Armani Hotel Dubai will specialize in kosher cuisine that complies with kashrut, Jewish dietary laws. It will be operated under the rabbinical supervision of Rabbi Levi Y. Duchman, rabbi of the UAE, who has certified the venue with glattkosher and pas Yisroel certifications from Emirates Kosher Supervising Agency, the only UAE-based kosher certifier. The iconic venue, with views of downtown Dubai, is one of few five-star hotels that offer guests kosher in-room dining service outside of Israel. Armani/Kaf will be closed for dinein guests on Fridays but offer a takeaway menu for Shabbat. Kosher delivery service is also in the works.
Ilhan Omar explains how people experience antisemitism. Really.
(JTA) – Many people have gaps in their understanding of what antisemitism is and how it works, according to Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has been accused of fomenting anti-semitism. Omar, D-Minn., offered her perspective on the antisemitism experience in an interview published Sunday, Sept 19, in The New York Times.
“In the process of writing a few of the opeds I’ve written on the rise of antiSemitism in comparison to the rise of Islamophobia, it has been interesting to see the ways in which so many people create a lens through which they see it,” she said. “It is important, when you are not of that community, to understand the different ways that bigotry shows up.”
Omar has been accused of writing several tweets echoing antisemitic stereotypes about Jews, money and power, and In July she came under fire for a campaign mailer that named three donors, all Jewish, to her Democratic primary opponent.
She told The Times Magazine that “there are a lot of preconceived notions about what thoughts and ideologies I have that have no basis in reality” based on her religion, skin color or gender.
Israel sends emergency supplies to malariastricken Chad
By Abigail Klein Leichman (Israel21C via JNS) When Israeli Flying Aid delivered several shipping containers full of donated medical equipment and food to refugees and orphans in Chad last October, IFA founder and CEO Gal Lusky said they would be back.
Two weeks ago, despite the pandemic, a Hercules military transport aircraft took off from an Israeli military base in the south, filled to capacity with items donated by IFA and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)–2,000 six-person tents, personal protection equipment (PPE) for medical teams, backpack sprayers to eradicate malaria-carrying mosquitos, and more. “The operation was completed tonight after 24 nerve-wracking hours,” Lusky told ISRAEL21c on Sept. 17. “It was amazing. The pilot was so emotional when they finally landed at 1 a.m.”
The African country has absorbed many refugees from neighboring countries who have been victimized by radical Muslim jihadis including Boko Haram. One of the biggest refugee camps, with 30,000 people, is near Lake Chad. “Nobody is speaking about the floods at Lake Chad,” Lusky tells ISRAEL21c. “They suffer from terrible malaria there. In that one refugee camp there are 12,000 cases of malaria.”
Chad Cabinet Chairman Abdul Kareem Déby came to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office a couple of weeks ago and described his country’s situation to the National Security Council. “I received a call from that meeting,” says Lusky. “Our prior mission in Chad last October was discussed and we were asked to help. I said, ‘You send the plane and I’ll stock it.’ The National Security Council made all the technical arrangements for the flight.”
The next trip is planned for sometime in 2021. “We’ll be there again with medical personnel to train them in respiratory care and ob/gyn surgeries,” Lusky says, explaining that girls as young as 10 are often raped or forced into marriage. “We have already shipped 40 tons of high nutritional-value food and one container of medical equipment, and we’ll distribute that to orphanages and places that suffer malnutrition. And we’ll support the hospital there dealing with malaria cases.”
This article first appeared in ISRAEL21c.
Emirati, Bahraini foreign ministers send Israel greetings for 5781
(Israel Hayom via JNS) “May it be a blessed year for realizing peace and stability in the region,” wrote Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani in response to his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, who had sent a Rosh Hashanah blessing on the eve of the Jewish new year, 5781. In personal Rosh Hashanah message to both al-Zayani and to Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan respectively, Ashkenazi said: “My dear friend, on the eve of the new year on the Jewish calendar, I would like to wish you and your people a year full of peace, prosperity, stability and health! Happy New Year!”
Al-Zayani responded, saying, “Thank you my dear friend Gabi Ashkenazi, the foreign minister of the State of Israel, for the [Rosh Hashanah] blessing… May it be a blessed year of realizing peace and stability in the region.” Al-Nahyan, the Emirati foreign minister, replied, ”Happy Rosh Hashanah, dear Gabi. This is a wonderful way to start the year and I hope this is a good sign for both of us in the region.”
On social media, too, Emirati citizens wished Israelis a happy new year. One twitter account managed in Hebrew said: “Happy new year to the Jews. May this year be the beginning of the new relationship between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.”
Florida will offer specialty license plate that supports Israel
(JTA) – Florida drivers can now show their support for Israel on their license plates.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation that authorizes the creation of a “Florida Stands With Israel” specialty plate. The legislation authorized nearly three dozen spe-cialty plates, according to Florida Politics. A portion of the revenue generated by sales of the Israel plate will benefit the first-responder organization Hatzalah of Miami-Dade. The new license plates must have 3,000 pre-orders in order to authorize production. The Israeli-American Council said it will launch a community marketing campaign to reach the mandate. An open contest sponsored by the council – and technically co-ordinated by the co-sponsoring organization, Artists 4 Israel – will decide on the design. The judges will include lawmakers and community leaders.
