Ruth Bader Ginsburg In Israel To Accept Award From Group Natalie Portman Snubbed

Image by Getty/Forward Montage

By Judy Maltz (Haaretz) July 3, 2018

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has arrived in Israel to receive an award from the Jewish organization snubbed earlier this year by actor Natalie Portman.

The inaugural Genesis Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to the U.S. Supreme Court justice in a private event at the Yitzhak Rabin Center, Tel Aviv, on Wednesday evening.

The Genesis Prize was established five years ago by a group of wealthy Jewish-Russian businessmen, to “recognize [Jewish] individuals who have attained excellence and international renown in their chosen professional fields.”

Haaretz’s Yossi Verter reported last November that Ginsburg had originally been tapped to receive the prize. However, according to Verter, the decision was reversed when the prize committee realized that the U.S. Supreme Court justice had been critical of Donald Trump prior to his election, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not want to be seen on the same stage with a liberal who had attacked the president. The committee itself, however, said it had overturned its decision when the panel’s legal adviser discovered that U.S. judges are barred from receiving monetary prizes from a foreign country.

As a result, the Genesis Prize Foundation announced in November that Ginsburg would receive the Lifetime Achievement Award and that Israeli-born, Academy Award-winning actor Portman would receive its top prize, which comes with a $1 million award.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO