H eadlines
Abramson RBG
seniors in our community
wherever and however they
need us is unchanged,” Irvine
wrote in a letter posted to
the Abramson website. “Our
commitment to the families we
serve remains at the very core
of this mission, and we look
forward to continuing to be
here for you as you navigate
the aging journey with your
loved ones.”
Abramson Senior Care
encompasses much more than
the newly named Horsham
Center for Jewish Life.

The umbrella organization
provides services to roughly
5,000 older Philadelphians,
with additional locations in
Bryn Mawr, Bustleton and
Wynnewood, at Lankenau
Medical Center. There are
options for geriatric rehabil-
itation, hospice programs,
at-home care, palliative care
and other programs. None
of that will change, and no
location besides Horsham will
be affected by the sale.

Adjustments made in
the last few years within the
commonwealth’s policies on
long-term care and Medicaid
managed care were a major
impetus for the decision to sell.

“Her life’s work was to make
sure the court took note and
understood and comprehended
what happens to we women
when we are considered less
worthy, less equal, unable to
get equal pay for equal work,”
said Lynne Abraham, former
Philadelphia District Attorney.

“It has a corrosive effect on
every one of us.”
The Brooklyn, New York,
native and Washington, D.C.,
resident visited Philadelphia
many times and was honored
by the city’s cultural and educa-
tional institutions. She received
an honorary degree from the
University of Pennsylvania in
2007 and visited the campus
again in 2018 to celebrate 25
years on the Supreme Court.

In 2019, she became the 21st
inductee into the National
Museum of American Jewish
History’s Only in America
Gallery/Hall of Fame. She was
also named the recipient of the
National Constitution Center’s
Liberty Medal in August.

She was presented with the
honorary degree by her friend
Amy Gutmann, president of
the University of Pennsylvania.

The two met at an academic
conference and bonded over
their experiences growing up
in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neigh-
borhood. Gutmann was struck
by Ginsburg’s friendliness and
how easy it was to relate to her.

“She was, for me, as she
was for so many other women,
an inspiration,” Gutmann said.

“But it was also for me very
significant that we had very
similar roots.”
“There’s a saying that if you
can see it, you can be it. To see a
woman, a Jewish woman and a
Jewish first-generation woman
from Flatbush, Brooklyn,
achieve what she achieved
was just an inspiration to me,
and still is an inspiration to
generations of women,” she
continued. During her visits to
Philadelphia, Ginsburg enjoyed
Continued from Page 1
12 SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
Continued from Page 1
The Madlyn and Leonard Abramson Center for Jewish Life will change its name to the Horsham Center for
Jewish Life.

The changes meant that
Abramson lost the flexibility
it once enjoyed in determining
who would be admitted to
the ACJL, based on factors
like family support, income
level, clinical background and
Medicaid eligibility.

“We realized that the ability
for us to make that determi-
nation really changed,” Irvine
said, “because now, we have a
managed care company that
says, ‘Oh no, that individual
that you think should move
into the nursing home, we can
take care of that individual in
the community, we’ll add a
little more home care dollars,
we’ll do this, we’ll do that.’ But
we lost the ability to make that
decision.” The Abramson board’s
research confirmed the fears
— Arizona, Irvine said, had
implemented such policies
20 years ago, and has seen
Changes in Pennsylvania’s policies regarding long-term care were part
of the reason that the board of Abramson Senior Care voted to sell the
Horsham campus. 
Courtesy of Abramson Senior Care
more than a 50% reduction in
total nursing home beds. The
combination of that research,
the reality of a long-flat rate
of Medicaid reimbursement for
nursing homes, and growing
consumer preference for
at-home care led to one conclu-
sion: It would be prudent to
sell the ACJL facility. On Oct.

30, the strategic planning
committee at Abramson voted
to explore a sale, and the
campus was listed in January.

Criteria for potential buyers
included a commitment to
maintaining Jewish care, a
willingness to allow Abramson
to retain a role as the preferred
provider for certain services
for residents, and a pledge to
keep “the vast majority,” Irvine
said, of the direct care workers.

Susan Barker, director of
nursing for Abramson Senior
Care, has overseen those
workers for 15 years, and has
worked at Abramson for 17
years total. From the first time
JEWISH EXPONENT
she heard about Abramson, its
mission — to honor thy father
and thy mother — has meant a
lot to her. She has longstanding
relationships with residents and
nurses, and wants Abramson to
continue to provide the same
care that it always has. There
will be changes for her staff; not
every direct care employee will
be hired by the new owner, and
those who do will have a new
human resources handbook
to learn. Yet she and those
who remain are committed
to making sure that ACJL
remains ACJL, new name or
not, pending completion of
the sale.

“I understand the finan-
cial piece, and the business
that health care has become,”
Barker said. “And certainly,
that mission statement — the
world was a very different place
when I started.” l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



F TAY-SACHS
R F R E E E E
H eadlines
Sophy Curson mannequins are dressed in tribute to Ruth Bader
Ginsburg in the store window on 19th Street.
Photo by Betsy Braun
shopping at Sophy Curson, a
women’s clothing boutique in
Rittenhouse Square.

“A few years ago when she
was in town for an event at the
National Constitution Center,
she stopped in the shop with
her security detail in tow,” said
David Schwartz, who co-owns
the boutique with his mother,
Susan Schwartz.

“My mother helped her and
before she left the store she
recounted a party dress that
she had purchased previously
that was colorful and rather
wild. She said she only wore
it to private parties when
there would be no press in
attendance.” The store has created
a tribute window display,
designed by Dana Morelli,
featuring photos, quotes
and mannequins dressed in
Ginsburg’s style.

Ginsburg’s status as a pop
culture icon has local roots.

Her nickname “Notorious
R.B.G.,” a play on rapper Biggie
Smalls’ nickname “Notorious
B.I.G.,’’ originated on a 2013
blog written by Jewish lawyer
and Philadelphia native Shana
Knizhnik while she was still in
law school.

Knizhnik later
co- authored “Notorious R.B.G: The
Life and Times of Ruth Bader
Ginsburg,” with journalist Irin
Carmon in 2015. It surged to
the top of The New York Times
Best Sellers list and fueled a
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM seemingly endless demand
for R.B.G.-themed merchan-
dise, from T-shirts and pins to
candles and collars.

“Her incredible superhero
status in American culture
was something that people
were sort of yearning for and
especially young people and
young women, in particular,”
Knizhnik told Anderson
Cooper of CNN.

In 2019, Ginsburg officiated
Knizhnik’s wedding.

Gutmann said Ginsburg
embraced the nickname even
though she did not invent the
persona. “She had a charisma that
was captured in the ‘Notorious
R.B.G.,’” she said. “She
has shown that it’s not an
oxymoron to be an intellectual
and a rock star.”
Gutmann witnessed her
impact on young people first-
hand when she presented
Ginsburg with the Berggruen
Prize for Philosophy and
Culture at the New York Public
Library in 2019. As Gutmann
waited in line for the restroom
after the event, a 14-year-old
girl overflowing with excite-
ment turned to her and said
she had just seen her idol speak.

Ginsburg was frank about
the importance of Jewish
tradition in her life and career,
hanging the Hebrew injunc-
tion to pursue justice on the
walls of her chambers.

“I am a judge, born, raised
and proud of being a Jew,”
she said in an address to the
American Jewish Committee
following her 1993 appoint-
ment to the court. “The demand
for justice runs through the
entirety of Jewish history and
Jewish tradition.”
She was the daughter of
Nathan Bader, a Russian
immigrant and furrier, and
the former Celia Amster. She
attended Cornell University,
where she met her husband,
Martin Ginsburg.

She was one of only nine
women in her Harvard Law
School class with about 500
men. A well-known story has it
that at a meeting of her female
classmates with the law school
dean, the women were asked
why they deserved a spot taken
from men.

Martin Ginsburg, a Harvard
Law graduate, took a job at a
New York law firm, while Ruth
Bader Ginsburg transferred to
Columbia. At both schools, she
served on the Law Review, and
she finished Columbia tied for
first in her class. Yet not a
single law firm would hire her.

Ginsburg eventually clerked
for Judge Edward Palmieri and
went on to teach law at Rutgers
University. She created the
Women’s Rights Project at the
American Civil Liberties Union
and was the first tenured woman
to teach law at Columbia.

Ginsburg quickly built a reputa-
tion for establishing gender
parity before the law, arguing six
major sex-discrimination cases
before the U.S. Supreme Court,
winning all but one.

In one of those winning
cases, Weinburger v. Wiesenfeld
in 1975, Ginsburg represented a
widower left with a child in
his care when his wife died in
childbirth. The father requested
the child care benefits that a
woman would receive if her
husband died but which were
then denied to men.

“She knew that gender
stereotypes harmed both men
and women, and that freeing
men in those cases from gender
stereotypes would reverberate
JEWISH EXPONENT
to free everyone for gender
stereotypes,” said David S.

Cohen, a Drexel University law
professor. As a Supreme Court jurist,
Ginsburg continued her fight
for gender equality. In 1996, she
wrote the majority opinion in
United States v. Virginia, which
deemed the Virginia Military
Institute’s policy of not admit-
ting women unconstitutional.

She also authored the dissent
in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire,
a pay discrimination case that
would lead to the 2009 Lily
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. She
advocated for racial and LGBTQ
equality, ruling to strike down
the Defense of Marriage Act
and overturn state marriage
bans so that same-sex couples
would have the right to wed.

“She definitely believed
that the Constitution guaran-
tees that equality should be
expanded to protect more
and more people from
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This message is sponsored by a friend of
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discrimination and govern-
ment subordination,” Cohen
said. “Through her work, we
now have major precedents
that have changed society and
made the world a more equal
place.” l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
You are invited to
R Remembrance
Re e emem mbran
meme embr
mbr anc
an c ce e Day
M Memorial
Me m meme or ial i iorior al Serv
mor Se Service
rv i ceicei
rvi InInI In Memoryryr
Memory of All
Alllll Loved Ones
Sunday, September 27th
at 12 Noon
Rabbi Isaac Leizerowski
Family, Friends and Public Welcome
Masks and Social Distancing practices followed
Celebrating each life like no other.

ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL PARK
spacer Trevose
215-673-7500 SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
13