Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The First Jewish Woman on the United States Supreme Court
![handle is hein.journals/cdozo19 and id is 1465 raw text is: ESSAY
RUTH BADER GINSBURG: THE FIRST JEWISH
WOMAN ON THE UNITED STATES SUPREME
COURT*
Malvina Halberstam**
I am... a first-generation American on my father's side, barely
second generation on my mother's. Neither of my parents had
the means to attend college, but both taught me to love learning,
to care about people, and to work hard for whatever I wanted or
believed in. Their parents had the foresight to leave the old
country, when Jewish ancestry and faith meant exposure to po-
groms and denigration of one's human worth.'
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the first Jewish woman (and only the
second woman) appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
Although not a religiously observant Jew, she is clearly very con-
scious of her Jewish roots, as evidenced by the statement quoted
above, and by her reply to Senator Edward Kennedy at the con-
firmation hearings. When he suggested that her personal experi-
ence and pioneering work with gender discrimination would also
sensitize her to racial discrimination, she said:
Senator Kennedy, I am alert to discrimination. I grew up dur-
ing World War II in a Jewish family. I have memories as a
child, even before the war, of being in a car with my parents and
passing a place in [Pennsylvania], a resort with a sign out in
front that read: No dogs or Jews allowed. Signs of that kind
existed in this country during my childhood. One couldn't help
but be sensitive to discrimination, living as a Jew in America at
* This Essay was originally prepared at the invitation of the editors of Jewish Women
in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, in which a shorter version of the Essay was pub-
lished. Malvina Halberstam, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1 JEWISH WOMEN IN AMERICA:
AN HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 515 (Paula E. Hyman & Deborah Dash Moore eds.,
1997).
** Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. I want
to thank Lucille Roussin, Cardozo '96, for assistance with the research for this Essay.
I Nomination of Ruth Ginsburg, to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States: Hearings Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 103d Cong. 49 (1994)
(statement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg) [hereinafter Hearings].
1441](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cdozo19&div=58&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The First Jewish Woman on the United States Supreme Court
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