Without RBG, a Rosh Hashanah Like No Other

I cooked meals for my family for Rosh Hashanah. I reviewed the service I had planned to lead that night from my home. There would be no big in-person family meals or services, only Zoom. But if ever I needed a new beginning, it was now. I wanted to put 5780 into the trash bin and start over in joy.

Then I heard the news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. My eyes filled with tears and my spirits fell. How could I lead festive services when my heart was filled with sorrow? How could I find the words to pay tribute to her life with so little time to reflect? How could we start the new year like this? With the pandemic, the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the shooting of Jacob Blake, the fires, and now this — it was all too much.

Somehow, as the service began, seeing familiar faces of congregants on the screen lifted me a little. To pay tribute to RBG, I needed to look no further than the song we had intended to begin the service, “Pitchu Li” — “Open for me the gates of justice, I will enter them and thank God.” (Psalm 118:19). That’s what RBG did. She opened the gates of justice wider for women and for everyone in this country.

The words she embodied are also in the first sentence of the Torah reading of the last week of her life, read on Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. With these words Moses summoned the whole people to ratify the covenant:

“You stand this day, all of you, before Adonai your God, your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from the woodchopper to the water drawer — to enter into the covenant of Adonai, your God.”

Moses specified that everyone was to be included in the community.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg conveyed the same idea in her speech at her nomination hearing for the Supreme Court in 1993:

“One of the world’s greatest jurists, Judge Learned Hand, said that “the spirit of liberty that imbues our Constitution must lie first and foremost in the hearts of the men and women who compose this great nation … a community where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.” I will keep that wisdom in the front of my mind as long as I am capable of judicial service.”

RBG opened the gates of justice wider for women and for everyone in this country.

Ginsburg’s decisions showed that she fulfilled this promise.

I take comfort in the idea that I spent Rosh Hashanah in a way Ginsburg may have liked. After leading virtual services on erev Rosh Hashanah, for the rest of the holiday, I watched the virtual services led by Rabbi Naomi Levy of Nashuva and Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR — who both paid tribute to Ginsburg. Levy and Brous had the courage to create their own congregations from scratch, and they have grown into large, thriving communities. Both are true prophets in the spirit of Ginsburg.

On Rosh Hashanah day, my stepmother, Melissa, recounted the time she met RBG during Ginsburg’s Senate confirmation. “Jewish women everywhere are proud of your accomplishment,” Melissa told Ginsburg.

“My grandchildren call me Bubbe,” Ginsburg replied.

How fitting now that Melissa retells this story as a Jewish grandmother to our children (who call her Safta).

We then had dinner over Zoom with our children’s other Safta and Saba and family. Over the rest of the holiday, I read the biography that my mother, Linda Bayer of blessed memory (who my children called Bubbe), wrote about Ginsburg. On the inside cover, my mother wrote me an inscription:

“May you continue to break down the barriers of discrimination and ignorance that hurt us all.”

In this New Year, in memory of Ginsburg, may we all resolve to do just that.

Rabbi Ilana Grinblat is the vice president of community engagement for the Board of Rabbis.