How Hammerin' Hank Greenberg Inspired RBG

For many American Jews observing Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement creates a challenge at our workplaces. Usually, the dilemma is whether we can arrange to take the day off to attend services. One of the most famous American stories exemplifying this choice occurred in 1934 when Jewish slugger Hank Greenberg, at the tender age of twenty-three, chose to honor his parents and observe the holiday. The much-needed home-run hitter went to synagogue instead of Tiger Stadium during a tense pennant race in Detroit, a city noted for its anti-Semitism in the 1930s. My father would retell this story of Greenberg's courageous decision every Yom Kippur when he drove my brother and me to synagogue. We heard this story so often that I grew up thinking Hank Greenberg was part of Yom Kippur's opening Kol Nidre services.

In 2007, I interviewed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a documentary I was making on the radio and television pioneer Gertrude Berg. She shared how the Molly Goldberg character and her creator were impressive female role models for her as a young girl listening to the radio show with her family in Brooklyn. As I had previously made a documentary about Hank Greenberg, I decided to also ask whether she had any issues in observing Yom Kippur while sitting on the Supreme Court. I was so pleased when Ginsburg answered by bringing up Greenberg as her inspiration for how to treat the holiday. As Justice Ginsburg described it, "The question of Yom Kippur and what to do about it was an issue at the Court when I was a new justice. The situation was different from what it was for Hank Greenberg. Hank Greenberg exercised a personal choice, but the game went on."¹

Ginsburg admitted that for her and Justice Stephen Breyer, who is also Jewish, the game could have gone on. "The question was not whether I would sit, or Justice Breyer would sit. The court could go on and we could participate because we could listen to the arguments on tapes."

Ginsburg then described why they went one step further if the Court was scheduled to meet on Yom Kippur. She said:

The reason Justice Breyer and I persuaded our colleagues that no one should sit, that the game should not go on, the argument should not go on, is that many of the lawyers who were scheduled to appear in cases on that day, would be put to a terrible choice, and it was thinking about not ourselves, but the people who come to plead before the court, they shouldn't be put to that kind of choice.

Ginsburg concluded by explaining why they used the Greenberg example:

We referred to him because everyone knew who he was, he was such a great ball player, as someone who couldn't betray his conscience in that way. And comparing his situation to the situation of the lawyers who would argue before us I think was effective.

On that day of filming at the Supreme Court, I was thrilled to learn that the courageous stand of a 1930s American Jewish hero on the baseball field had inspired my modern-day Jewish heroine on the Supreme Court.