The Guardian newspaper, in its glowing obituary of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, informed us that “she abandoned her religion” at the age of 17. The reason? “She was not allowed to join a minyan (a group of men) to mourn her mother’s death.”
There are several red herrings here and I will attempt to fillet them shortly to the JC’s high-street standards. But consider first what this assertion tells us about the Guardian’s fallen standards of factual reporting and its post-Corbyn twist of casting Jews and Judaism in a prejudicial light.
Anyone who has ever mourned a Jew will know that no mourner is ever turned away from a minyan. A mourner has status in Judaism. It would be a sin for anyone, rabbi or security guy, to exclude a person in grief. It just doesn’t happen. So what’s the Guardian getting at, and should we care?
The facts are incontrovertible. Ruth Bader was raised in a traditional Jewish home in the Midwood area of Brooklyn, New York. The family attended the East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue. An outstanding student at its Hebrew classes, she went to camp in the Adirondacks every summer, was known as the ‘junior rabbi’ and would lead Sabbath prayers.
Later, she married a Jewish lawyer and sent her kids to Hebrew school. No sign that she “abandoned her religion” at any time, whatever may have upset her when she was 17. Fighting a case on behalf of an Orthodox soldier who wanted to wear his kippah on duty, she argued that the US military showed “callous indifference” to his religious faith. Ruth Ginsburg was never indifferent. As a Supreme Court justice she declared, “I am a judge born, raised and proud of being a Jew”.
The Guardian’s case rests on an evening at her mother’s shiva when the lack of a quorum meant no-one could say kaddish — even though, as Justice Ginsburg described it in a 2008 synagogue speech, there was “a house full of women”. Distressing, right? Young woman can’t say kaddish for her mum because there are not enough men. We’ve all been there. Those are the old-school Jewish rules: only men count for a minyan and you need ten of them or nobody gets to say kaddish. When this happens, mourners have options. They either ring friends to come round fast, make a dash for the nearest shul, or join Reform. Pick or mix. No-one quits Judaism over a missed Kaddish.
Now it could be that as an ardent feminist the future Justice was more than averagely upset. But the former junior rabbi knew the rules and knew they came in the package called Judaism, like those scratchy toys in a cereals box. You don’t stop eating cornflakes because the plastic cowboy’s blue.
So the Guardian got it wrong and was soon alerted to the error on social media. “Not sure why RBG would’ve showed up to my synagogue on most High Holidays if she ‘abandoned her religion’”, tweeted one ‘Abigail’. In these circs, most newspapers would yield a swift correction and possibly an apology. Not the Guardian. It kept the offending sentence and, many hours later, added a qualifier: “Indignant at that exclusion, she nevertheless remained deeply committed to her Jewish identity.” How wrong is that? First, there was no exclusion. Second, it’s not her identity that was doubted but the fact of her faith, and that’s what we should find disturbing.
Lately, like one of those Finnish airport dogs retrained to sniff Covid on incoming passengers, I have become acutely aware of unconscious signifiers of antisemitism in left-wing media. This is a glaring instance of Guardian anti-Judaism.
To Guardianistas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a latter-day saint who fought for women’s equality, minority rights and same-sex marriages. In a nation polarised between reactionaries and reformers, she was stigmatised by the Trumpist right as “the notorious RBG” and embraced by Barack Obama as “a great friend”. To the Corbynite left in this country she represented all that is acceptable in a Jew. She was Bernie Sanders in a skirt, Jerry Seinfeld without the jokes.
What she could not possibly be was one of those demon Zionists or, by implication, an adherent of the religion that created Zionism. It was inconceivable to the Guardian that a light of the left could be a believing Jew. It had to claim that she “abandoned her religion” and it could not retract that lie in the face of hard facts. Like the Spanish Inquisition, the Guardian could recognise RBG only if she renounced her Judaism.
Yet she did not, far from it. On the wall of her Supreme Court chambers she posted three Hebrew words from Deuteronomy, “tsedek tsedek tirdof”, always pursue justice. Her justice was Jewish to the very end. She even donated to causes in Israel. Just don’t tell the Guardian.
