JNS
RBG: An American Jewish justice warrior
by Melanie Phillips
September 24, 2020

The obituary in Britain’s Guardian newspaper of the iconic liberal US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last weekend, provoked outrage among a number of Jews. In the piece, Godfrey Hodgson wrote: “Ruth was brought up in a Conservative Jewish tradition and learned Hebrew as a child, but abandoned her religion because she was not allowed to join a minyan (a group of men) to mourn her mother’s death when she was 17.” He also wrote: [In 1993, President Bill] Clinton was anxious to make the supreme court more diverse, so Ginsburg’s Jewish religion, which she had given up 46 years earlier, may have counted for more than a lifetime of commitment.” READ MORE