Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein.
“The genius of our Constitution is that this concept of ‘We the people’ has become ever more embracive,” she told a reverent crowd of 1,400 on Thursday night in Washington.
Ginsburg is one of the few rock-star Supreme Court justices in history (those same attributes draw her critics, too, of course).
The justice was introduced Thursday by a female rabbi who painted Ginsburg as hero of the marginalized in a “dark moment” — ostensibly a Trump moment.
“You have helped us remain clear — not just on the foundational principles of a nation, but on our Jewish mandate: to welcome the stranger and never to stand idly by. The Hebrew words on your office wall in calligraphy read, ‘Zedek, zedek, tirdof: Justice, Justice shalt thou pursue.’ You have. And we’ll keep trying.”
Ginsburg’s interpretation of Judaism as primarily about social justice — not text study and worship — jibes with the faith of many American Jews, particularly at a more liberal congregations. The event was an interview of Ginsburg by Jane Eisner, editor in chief of The Forward, a major Jewish news source that is progressive. Eisner said nearly 120 “watch parties” had registered with The Forward for the event, and that Ginsburg is seen by many Jews as embodying a kind of devotion to ethics.
“To quote my Bubbe,” she said, using the Yiddish word for grandma, “ ‘A Jew is what a Jew does.’ It’s not what you believe.”
While she is known for speaking out more than other justices — or perhaps just garnering more attention and celebrity — Ginsburg veered in a different direction when Eisner asked if justices should respond more clearly “when so many democratic norms seem to be under assault.”
“The judiciary is a reactive branch of government. It doesn’t generate the controversies that come before it. It has no agenda,” she said. An independent judiciary “is our nation’s hallmark and pride.”
While she talked about her experience of growing up Jewish and female.
“Growing up in the shadow of World War II… There was the sense of being an outsider, of being one of the people who suffered oppression for no sensible reason, the sense of being part of a minority makes you more empathetic to those who aren’t insiders, who are outsiders.”
Ginsburg had bitter challenges in her life. Her only other sibling died when Ginsburg was a baby, and her mother became ill with cancer and died when the justice had just finished high school.
She was extremely fond of her mother, who she says emphasized two things:
“One was to be a lady. And by that she didn’t mean fancy dress. She meant be in control of your emotions” and don’t give in to remorse and envy. “Those emotions sap your strength and keep women from moving forward. Her other message was: Be independent. She emphasized the importance of being able to fend for yourself.”
Ginsburg talked about not legal discrimination against women at this point, but more of a quiet bias. Sometimes gender bias takes the form of a “compliment” to women, she said, like saying society should make efforts to keep women at home so as to protect that role.
Ginsburg talked about various important men, from her late husband, who praised her constantly, to a fellow Brooklyn native from whom her nickname is derived (the rapper Notorious B.I.G.) to the late Antonin Scalia, a gregarious, Italian Catholic Supreme Court justice who was often her foil. Political polar opposites, they loved opera, family and making each other “crack up” she said.
“Sometimes I’d speak to him in private” about opinions he wrote — with which she’d usually disagree sharply. “I’d say: ‘This is so over the top, tone it down and it will be more persuasive.’ He never took that advice.”
