Tag Archives: Supreme Court

Jew of the Week: Raquel Montoya-Lewis

The First Native American Jew on a Supreme Court

Raquel Montoya-Lewis at her swearing-in ceremony

Raquel Montoya-Lewis (b. 1968) was born in Spain to a Jewish mother from Australia and a Native American father from New Mexico. Because her father worked for the US Air Force, the family travelled a lot when she was young. Yet, they always returned to the Pueblo of Isleta reservation which was their home. Her mother made sure to instill Jewish values and traditions, too. Montoya-Lewis went on to study at the University of New Mexico, and then at the University of Washington School of Law. To gain a deeper understanding of how laws affect societies, she also got a Master’s degree in social work. Although she sought to become a law professor, Montoya-Lewis was invited to preside over a number of trials in Native American communities. Eventually, she became the chief judge of the Lummi nation, Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, and the Nooksack Indian tribe, among others. Meanwhile, she taught law at Western Washington University. In 2015 Montoya-Lewis was appointed to the Superior Court of Whatcom County. After being recognized for her exceptional work, she was recommended for Washington State’s Supreme Court. Last month, Montoya-Lewis was officially sworn in. That makes her the first ever Native American tribal member (and first Native American Jew, of course) to hold such a position, and only the second Native in American history to be a state supreme court judge. At her swearing-in ceremony, she invited both a rabbi and a Native American leader to speak. Montoya-Lewis herself said: “I was raised to remember that I come from those who survived. My ancestors on both sides of my family survived genocide, survived institutional boarding schools, survived attempts to eradicate their cultures, and yet as my father reminded me often, ‘we survived’… I am here because of their resilience, their courage, their intelligence, and their deep commitment to what is just.”

Words of the Week

The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer… But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far.

  – Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

Jew of the Week: Rosalie Abella

Rosalie Silberman Abella (b. 1946) was born to Jewish-Polish Holocaust survivors in a displaced persons camp in Germany. When she was a child, the family moved to Halifax, and then settled in Toronto. Abella followed in her father’s footsteps and became a lawyer, graduating from the University of Toronto. She was a civil and family lawyer for five years before being appointed to the Ontario Family Court, aged just 29. This made her the youngest judge in Canada’s history – and the first pregnant one! Sixteen years later, she moved up to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Abella also sat on Ontario’s Human Rights Commission, and became a renowned expert on human rights law. Abella coined the term “employment equity” while overseeing the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment in 1983. She pioneered a number of strategies to improve employment for women, minorities, and aboriginals, which have been implemented in countries around the world. In 2004, she was appointed to Canada’s Supreme Court, making her the first Jewish woman to sit on the nation’s highest judiciary. Recently, Abella was named the Global Jurist of the Year for her work with human rights and international criminal law. Among her many other awards, she has received 37 honourary degrees, including one from Yale University – the first Canadian woman to do so. One politician said of her: “I’ve never met any judge in my life, and I know a lot of them – I used to be a lawyer – who understands people better than Rosie, and the importance of people in the judicial process. I think the human quality she brings to the bench is unsurpassed in my experience.”

Words of the Week

My life started in a country where there had been no democracy, no rights, no justice and all because we were Jewish. No one with this history does not feel lucky to be alive and free. No one with this history takes anything for granted, and no one with this history does not feel that we have a particular duty to wear our identities with pride and to promise our children that we will do everything humanly possible to keep the world safer for them than it was for their grandparents, a world where all children – regardless of race, colour, religion, or gender – can wear their identities with dignity, with pride and in peace.
– Rosalie Abella

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Yehuda Glick

Yehuda Glick (Credit: Amitay Salomon)

Yehuda Glick (Credit: Amitay Salomon)

Yehuda Joshua Glick (b. 1965) was born in Brooklyn to an Orthodox Jewish family which made aliyah to Israel when he was nine years old. After completing his rabbinical studies, Glick began working for the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. In 2005, after some ten years, he quit the job to protest Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He then served as executive director of The Temple Institute, an organization working to rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem through peaceful means. Glick is most famous for his activism with regards to permitting Jews to ascend the Temple Mount. This area is the holiest site in the world for the Jewish people, yet entrance to it is severely limited for Jews, and prayer there is currently forbidden to all but Muslims. As chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation and leader of the HaLiba group, Glick has worked tirelessly to end this racist policy, and to open the Temple Mount for visitation and prayer to people of all faiths. He envisions rebuilding a temple – “a house of prayer for all nations” – next to the Dome of the Rock. For leading prayer groups to the Temple Mount, Glick has been arrested multiple times. In 2013, he went on a hunger strike to protest a ban that forbid him to go to the Temple Mount. After twelve days without food, Glick was permitted to return to the Mount. In 2014, after giving a speech at a Jerusalem conference, an Arab man approached Glick and shot him four times in the chest before driving off on a motorcycle. Glick underwent multiple surgeries, and was unable to communicate or breathe on his own for a couple of weeks. Amazingly, he survived the assassination attempt. Shortly after, he joined the Likud political party, and was placed 33rd on its list. The party won 30 seats, making Glick third in line to become a parliamentarian. Over the past year, three Likud MKs resigned, including Moshe Ya’alon earlier this month. This opened the door for Glick to enter Knesset, which he did two days ago. His calls for peace, prayer, and human rights are truly universal, as he has stood by not only Orthodox Jews, but also Christian groups and Reform Jews (including the Women of the Wall) who aim to pray freely at Jerusalem’s holy sites. He has also spoken frequently about ending the plight of the Palestinians, and bridging gaps between Jews and Muslims. In addition to his own six kids, Glick is the legal guardian of six more children, and two foster children. He has been compared to Gandhi, and described as “earthly, wise, thoughtful, nonviolent, and compassionate.” Last year, he was awarded the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism by the Jewish National Fund.

Words of the Week

If your dreams don’t scare you, they are not big enough.
– Ellen Johnson Sirleaf