On This Day in Jewish History: September 18, 2020
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We mourn the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg z”l who lost her struggle against cancer on Rosh Hashana, 5781.
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A proud Jew, Zionist, titan of the US Supreme Court, and a leading voice of its liberal wing. We remember her life and legacy in blessing.
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Ginsburg’s lifelong dedication to the principle of equal treatment under law, especially as it sought to challenge a history of gender discrimination in the US made her a champion of the women’s movement.
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From her work on the Women’s Rights Project of the ACLU to her landmark victories in front of the court to her majority and dissenting opinions on the bench, RBG, as she came to be known later in life, helped clear a legal path for succeeding generations.
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Justice Ginsburg was born Ruth Bader in Brooklyn in 1933 into a Russian Jewish family. Her father was a retail merchant and her mother worked in the garment district.
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Her family was affiliated with a Conservative synagogue in East Midwood Brooklyn and she spent her summers as a youth at the Jewish summer camps.
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Ginsburg experienced tragedy early in life. Her older sister died at the age of 6. Her mother died from cancer at age 47, one day before Ruth’s high school graduation.
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She would overcome these losses, studying at Cornell, where she met her life-long love and future husband Martin Ginsburg, and then Harvard and Columbia Law.
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She ran up against, and often broke, gender and cultural boundaries everywhere she went.
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She was on the Law Review of Harvard and Columbia and would go on to become the first Jewish woman on the Supreme Court (second woman all time)
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Justice Ginsburg was a shining star from a generation of Jewish shining stars in America, individuals who came from working and middle class backgrounds as the children of immigrants to have a profound impact on medicine, law, and culture.
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In particular, the current generation of young women for whom RBG became an icon in her 80s, stand on the shoulders of this woman, just five feet tall but a giant for her times.
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