Rabbi memorializes Ginsburg: Her dissents were ‘blueprints for the future’

The rabbi who leads the Washington synagogue where the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg worshiped mourned her on Friday as a trailblazer for gender equality who demonstrated persistence with her judicial dissents.

Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, who leads the Adas Israel Congregation, eulogized Ginsburg at a ceremony in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall where the late justice became the first woman and first Jewish person to lie in state.

“Justice did not arrive like a lightning bolt, but rather, through dogged persistence, all the days of her life. Real change, she said, enduring change, happens one step at a time,” Holtzblatt said.

Holtzblatt pointed to the adversities Ginsburg faced: the death of her sister and her mother as a child and her inability to find a job at any law firm in New York because of her gender, despite graduating at the top of her law school class.

“Pursuing justice took resilience, persistence, a commitment to never stop. As a lawyer, she won equality for women and men not in one swift victory, but brick by brick, case by case, through meticulous, careful lawyering,” Holtzblatt said. “And even when her views did not prevail, she still fought.”

“Despair was not an option. She said, and I quote, ‘Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, my colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way. But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually, over time, their views become the dominant view. So that the dissenters hope that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow,’ ” Holtzblatt continued.

“Justice Ginsburg’s dissents were not cries of defeat. They were blueprints for the future,” Holtzblatt said.

Ginsburg is lying in state in the Capitol on Friday after lying in repose at the Supreme Court on Wednesday and Thursday for members of the public to pay their respects.

Friday’s ceremony was invitation-only to ensure social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the guests at Friday’s ceremony were Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump stopped by the Supreme Court on Thursday to pay their respects and were not in attendance at Friday’s ceremony.