What Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Online Mourners Got Right and Wrong about Jews, Death, and the Afterlife

Opening my computer after the end of Rosh Hashanah this past Sunday, having seen a headline about her death on a newspaper on the street over the holiday, I expected to find tributes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s accomplishments and legacy, as well as projections about the political battle I knew must be brewing in its wake. All this I found and more, much of which I was not expecting, namely the bevy of questionable claims on behalf of “Judaism” that had gone viral while I was logged off. A high-profile Jewish person had passed away—one of the most powerful Jewish people in the country—on one of the most significant days on the Jewish calendar. So it makes sense that those spending Rosh Hashanah on their computers would spread Jewish ideas in connection with her passing.

The nature and accuracy of those ideas were also hotly debated; indeed, they still are. And this debate in turn shows us several things about the vibrant but little-examined Jewish life that sprouts up on social media, about what Jews believe death means, and about well-meaning American Jews, often eager to assert their identity, even as they may be ill-informed of their own tradition, as well as the overactive instinct to censure them among those who know—or think they know—better.

Let’s start by saying that some of the material on Ginsburg’s death was helpful, like the many annoyed objections to the recitation of the hymn “Amazing Grace” outside the Supreme Court by some of Ginsburg’s admirers. The use of such an explicitly Christian prayer to honor a proud Jew like her would seem to be offensive, or at least tasteless, these objectors pointed out. Here we can say that “clap-backs” like these—as such posts are sometimes known—are valuable in asserting Jewish tradition in the face of those who threaten to elide it, whether by intent or by negligence (even if we can also acknowledge that the singers of “Amazing Grace” were giving voice, in their own language, to a sentiment that is meant to be sympathetic rather than antagonistic).