Meet the rabbi who led Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s funeral service
Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt leads Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memorial service on Wednesday, September 23, 2020. Image by Molly Boigon
By Molly Boigon September 23, 2020
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.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
