Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Meet the rabbi who led Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s funeral service

Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt spoke and sang at Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s funeral Wednesday in the Supreme Court.

“This was Justice Ginsburg’s life’s work, to insist that the Constitution deliver on its promise that ‘We the People’ would include all the people,” she said. “She carried out that work in every chapter of her life.”

She also sang Psalm 23 in Hebrew and ended with El Malei Rachamim, a prayer traditionally said for the deceased.

Holtzblatt is a rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., who revamped the synagogue’s bereavement programs and co-created the adult learning curriculum, among other projects, according to the synagogue’s website. In 2015, she co-wrote a feminist essay about the Passover story with Ginsburg.

She is a Schusterman Fellow, a board member at Avodah, a committee member for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the director of the Jewish Mindfulness Center of Washington.

Holtzblatt was formerly the Hillel Foundation Director of Campus Initiatives and Associate rabbi at Yale University Hillel and a rabbinic fellow at B’nai Jeshurun.

She was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary and is married to Ari Holtzblatt, who clerked for Justice Ginsburg in 2014.

Holtzblatt shared the news of Ginsburg’s death with her congregation during a Rosh Hashanah service and recalled a visit to the justice’s chambers, during which Ginsburg explained the significance of different objects to Holtzblatt’s daughter.

Correction, September 25, 2:13 p.m.: A previous version of this story misidentified the co-authored Passover essay as a Haggadah.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.