(Jewish Group) A year without RBG: Mourning and celebrating the Jewish legend on her yahrtzeit

I was RBG’s rabbi. Her legacy demands we fight for human dignity and reproductive rights.

Grief is a complicated animal. I have often described its presence to my congregants as a mountain — sometimes it is across from you and you can see it, sometimes you are climbing it, sometimes you have summited it and sometimes it is just right on top of you. We do not control it, we live with it.

Our collective losses as a country have felt at times unbearable over the last year. Last September, as people gathered around screens in their homes for Rosh Hashanah services, another loss was about to befall us; the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As we approach her first yahrzeit, many of us are feeling the loss of this crusader of justice, especially in a time where the tide is pushing in the wrong direction on abortion, voting rights and equality.

When I reminisce about the wisdom of Justice Ginsburg, who was my congregant and friend, I am reminded of the wisdom that she gave us not only in her legal rulings and powerful dissents, but in the way she lived her life as a mentor and teacher. She was truly the same person, fighting for the dignity of others, in all aspects of public and private life.

In the Talmud, Masechet Brachot, we are taught that “ein tocho k’boro” — a person whose inside is not like their outside, meaning that their external behavior that does not reflect their inner character — is not given a seat in the great house of study. I have often thought of this teaching when watching how Justice Ginsburg lived her life; her inside character matched the values she fought for in the world.

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See also: For America, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a new kind of Jew

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a true ‘tzadik,’ battled to the end. Now it’s on us.