NEW YORK TIMES
Judge Ruchie, the Hasidic Superwoman of Night Court
by Sharon Otterman
November 17, 2017

…This is Ruchie Freier, as friends call her, a 52-year-old Hasidic Jewish grandmother who has blazed a trail in her insular religious community with so much determination that the male authorities have simply had to make room. Eleven years ago, she became one of the first Hasidic female lawyers in Brooklyn, and last November, she was elected as a judge to civil court, making her almost certainly the first female Hasidic elected official in the country. She has done so not by breaking the strict religious rules that govern ultra-Orthodox women’s lives, but by obeying them so scrupulously that there are limited grounds for objection. READ MORE