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infant, I overslept; she took care of him and didn’t go to Sunday school. And I was so glad that she did such a good job. So she said that she would make a deal with us: If she didn’t have to go to Sunday school anymore, she would take care of James every Sunday morning. That was an offer I could hardly refuse. So that’s when she stopped.
    â€œBut Jane became very Jewish again when she married a Catholic boy,” Ginsburg continues. “First, she wanted to have a rabbi reassure her that even if her children were baptized—which they were because it was important to my son-in-law’s Italian-Catholic mother—that it could still be a Jewish baby. And I thought that would be easy.” Ginsburg shakes her neatly chignoned head. “But it was very, very hard to find a rabbi who would say that. Ab [Abner] Mikva was my chief judge on the D.C. Circuit Court. His daughter is a rabbi and she said, ‘No, I won’t tell her that.’”
    I remark that this must have been very upsetting. “Yes,” Ginsburg says with a nod, “but I said to Jane, ‘This woman [the Italian-Catholic mother-in-law] is thinking that if her grandchild isn’t baptized,
this child’s soul will
never go to heaven
. So it’s just to put her at ease.’”
    Did it matter to Justice Ginsburg that her children marry Jews? “No. Jane is married to a very fine man who is perfect for her. And she had anticipated all kinds of difficulties that didn’t arise. There was a question of Sunday school and I said, ‘Wait till George—my son-in-law—finds the church that he is going to enroll Paul and Clara in.’ And he never did—to this day he hasn’t. My granddaughter, who will be thirteen in October, is this summer—for the second time—going to a Hadassah-run camp on the French side of Lake Geneva. So now she knows more about Judaism than I have forgotten.”
    Ginsburg seems comforted by a sense that her grandchildren know what’s at the heart of their birthright. “I think they have enough of an understanding that, when you are a Jew, the world will look at you that way; and this is a heritage that you can be very proud of. That this small band of people have survived such perils over the centuries. And that the Jews love learning, they’re the people of the book. So it’s a heritage to be proud of. And then, too, it’s something that you can’t escape because the world won’t let you; so it’s a good thing that you can be proud of it.”
    So what does it mean to be Jewish without rituals? “Think of how many prominent people in different fields identify themselves proudly as Jews but don’t take part in the rituals,” Ginsburg replies. She adds that even without observance, being Jewish still matters greatly to her. “I’ll show you one symbol of that which is here”—she gets up—“if you come.” We walk across her office, which is surprisingly ordinary—no dark paneled walls, inlaid desks, or library lamps. It looks more like a civil service office with gray carpeting, tan puffy leather chairs, and a round glass table (with a stuffed Jiminy Cricket doll sitting on top). The only clue to Ginsburg’s personality is the profusion of family photos propped on her bookshelves—pictures of son, James, who produces classical music recordings from Chicago; daughter, Jane, who teaches literary and artistic property law at Columbia; the two grandchildren; and of course, the requisite Ginsburg-with-Presidents Series—Carter, Clinton, Bush Sr., George W.
    She guides me to her main office door, where a gold mezuzah is nailed prominently to its frame. “At Christmas around here, every door has a wreath,” she explains. “I received this mezuzah from the Shulamith School for Girls in Brooklyn, and it’s a way of saying, ‘This is my space, and please