{"id":90293,"date":"2021-10-26T17:05:18","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T15:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=90293"},"modified":"2021-10-25T09:36:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T07:36:44","slug":"31-05-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=90293","title":{"rendered":"The Shabbos Goyim"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The Shabbos Goyim<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

NATHAN LEWIN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Thurgood Marshall, left, and Colin PowellLIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION; JEROME DELAY\/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A lesson in interfaith understanding from Colin Powell and Thurgood Marshall<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
\n
\n

The sad passing of Colin Powell has generated many loving accounts in Jewish media of his recollections serving as a \u201cShabbos goy\u201d in his youth, when he assisted with tasks that were forbidden to observant Jews on the Sabbath. \u201cCollie,\u201d as his Jewish employer called the teenaged Powell, told Jewish audiences that in addition to serving as a \u201cshlepper\u201d in a Bronx infant-goods store owned by an Orthodox Jew, he collected a quarter each Friday night for turning off the lights at the synagogue.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

What many may not know is that Powell was not the only Shabbos goy to grow to greatness. In the summer of 1965, I was introduced to another national icon who\u2014I discovered to my surprise\u2014had youthful exposure to this same Jewish practice. I had been working for two years as an assistant to the solicitor general of the United States under Archibald Cox, a Harvard Law professor who had been appointed by President John F. Kennedy. (Years later, Cox gained national fame as the Watergate special prosecutor fired by President Richard Nixon.) That year, however, President Lyndon Johnson chose to replace Cox with the nationally respected attorney Thurgood Marshall, as a stepping-stone to making Marshall the country\u2019s first African American Supreme Court justice.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Marshall had been named by Kennedy to the Federal Court of Appeals in New York, and left that judicial slot to become the federal government\u2019s advocate in the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General\u2019s Office at that time had seven assistants, and I was lucky enough to be one of the elite group that argued cases before the High Court. Marshall was confirmed by the Senate and arrived at his relatively modest corner office in the Justice Department in mid-August. The lawyers he inherited from the Cox era were told to come in, one at a time, to \u201cmeet the judge\u201d who was to be our new boss. We were asked to begin the conversation by telling Marshall about our background, so that he could acquaint himself with his new staff.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Being relatively junior, I came late in the process. When notified that it was my turn, I entered his office, shook hands, and reviewed my education and experience, which included attendance at Yeshiva University and Harvard Law School, and service as a law clerk on the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Marshall sat quietly through it all, exhibiting faint boredom. He had undoubtedly heard many such resumes before. When I finished, I thought I had better warn him that I was a Sabbath-observer and would be unavailable on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. All my prior bosses\u2014Judge Lumbard, Justice Harlan, and professor Cox\u2014had known this and readily accepted my absences.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

I began by telling Marshall that I was an Orthodox Jew who observed the Sabbath. Since the holidays were approaching, I thought I had better mention those, too. So I continued, \u201cIn addition to Saturdays, I can\u2019t work on the Jewish holidays, and they are coming soon. First there is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, and then comes the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

At this point, the judge interrupted. \u201cYes, and then there\u2019s Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah.\u201d I almost fell over. \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d I said, and added, \u201cBut how do you know that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cEasy,\u201d Marshall replied, \u201cI grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore. In fact, I made some money by turning off lights in homes there on Friday nights.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Working for Solicitor General Marshall over the next two years was a pleasure, and we got along famously. When Marshall presented to the Supreme Court in a companion to the famous Miranda <\/em>case\u2014which mandated the practice of informing an arrested suspect of his right to remain silent\u2014I worked with him in preparation for that argument and sat as second chair. Marshall thought well enough of me that, after I left government for private practice, he called to tell me that he was recommending that I be appointed to brief and argue a case in the High Court for a defendant who needed a court-appointed lawyer. I presented that case and unfortunately lost it, notwithstanding persuasive dissents by Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Justice Marshall even invoked his early years in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood when it affected a case before him. In 1981, the Air Force threatened to court martial Simcha Goldman, a psychologist at an Air Force base in California, for wearing a yarmulke while in uniform at a military hospital. Goldman asked me to be his lawyer, and I argued that denying him the right to wear a skullcap violated the religious protections of the Constitution\u2019s First Amendment. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court. In a 5-to-4 decision, it rejected our constitutional claim. (Shortly thereafter, Congress effectively nullified the Supreme Court ruling by enacting a law granting service members the right to wear \u201cneat and conservative\u201d items of religious apparel.) The four dissenters in Goldman\u2019s case were Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and O\u2019Connor.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In his will, Justice Blackmun left his papers to the Library of Congress, so his handwritten notes of the private conferences attended only by the justices are now publicly available. The court held conferences each Friday after an argument session to exchange their initial thoughts on the cases heard that week. Blackmun\u2019s notes of the conference held on Jan. 17, 1986, (the Friday following my oral argument of the Goldman case), show Marshall as voting in favor of Goldman\u2019s constitutional right. In Blackmun\u2019s handwriting, jotted down during the conference in the space allotted to \u201cMarshall, J.,\u201d appears the following: \u201cI was raised in Orthodox J neighborhood in Baltimore. Very impt to them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

May we all cultivate such understanding of those who live and worship differently from us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Nathan Lewin<\/strong> is a Washington lawyer with a Supreme Court practice who has taught at Harvard, Georgetown, Columbia, and University of Chicago Law Schools.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Shabbos Goyim NATHAN LEWIN Thurgood Marshall, left, and Colin PowellLIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION; JEROME DELAY\/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES A lesson in interfaith understanding from Colin Powell and Thurgood Marshall The sad passing of Colin Powell has generated many loving accounts in Jewish media of his recollections serving as a \u201cShabbos goy\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90293"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90311,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90293\/revisions\/90311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}