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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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
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an c ce e Day
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Sunday, September 27th
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Celebrating each life like no other.

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