"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's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow." Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
A quiet and unassuming Jewish girl from Brooklyn, a Cornell graduate. The similarities between me and the notorious, brilliant, and indomitable RBG end there. It's a bit presumptuous of me to feel as if a piece of me has died, but, hey, without notorious, brilliant, and indomitable, that's all I got.
We had just clinked our wine glasses together to toast this already strange Jewish new year when the text came through on my watch. (I had tucked my phone away in my purse, but my watch bucked my efforts at decorum). We had just bidden good riddance to the old year, each of us expressing some sentiment of desperate hope for better things to come. RBG had chosen this moment to leave us. I gasped.
On these Days of Awe*, our celebration was, by design, small and quiet, without hugs. But we were together, at least some of us, and we had matzoh balls and brisket and kugel and challah, the comforting and familiar trappings of holiday dinners past. And wine. If nothing else, our gastronomic traditions would remind us that all is not lost.
But Ruth is gone. The woman upon whose shoulders so many of us have stood, often without a thought for the tremendous burden she has carried. We have enjoyed the fruits of her years of labor, felt entitled to the hard-fought gifts she bestowed upon us as we coasted. We ascended through her dissent, and we begged her to stay through our descent, and she did, as long as she could, without protest.
She is gone, and she has left us to do what we will with her legacy. Talk about an inflection point. At the very beginning of the Days of Awe, she has let us know it is time for us to take up the mantle, to step off her fragile shoulders and fight our own battles without her, to dissent and dissent and dissent. Sure, we owe it to ourselves, but more than anything, we owe it to her. To feel awe for this small but mighty daughter of Brooklyn is natural; to do something about it is, well, divine. I am not a very religious person, but I am convinced her death, at this moment, is the work of some higher power. A celestial kick in the behind.
Rest in peace, notorious RGB, daughter of Brooklyn, warrior queen for so many of us, and know that we will fight to make your memory a blessing. We will buck the evil, the power-grabbers, the mockers of democracy, and we will not let them take from us the gifts you worked so hard to bestow. "So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune," said Ruth. May her passing spur us on.
*The Days of Awe: A delicate blend of joy and solemnity, feasting and fasting, prayer and inspiration make up the spiritually charged head of the Jewish year. www.chabad.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment