Dinners With Ruth

Totenberg praises close, reciprocal friendships for occupying an important role in people’s lives. The author reflects on becoming friends with Ginsburg, noting that while they had similar personal backgrounds as the children of Jewish immigrants, they had major differences too (2). Ginsburg was a wife, mother, and college graduate, while Totenberg did not graduate from college and had no desire to become a parent. The author’s father was a professional violinist who had immigrated to the US in the 1930s. Totenberg proudly recounts that he performed for President Roosevelt at the young age of 24. Growing up in Russia, young Roman Totenberg learned violin from a neighbor and performed for bread and butter, which helped provide for his family in times of famine before he immigrated to the US as a young man. Meanwhile, Totenberg’s mother, Melanie, was born in San Francisco and moved to New York, where she met Roman Totenberg in 1940. Distraught over the war in Europe and the fate of his family, Roman found relief and joy in his relationship with Melanie. They married a year later, with Melanie always supporting her husband’s professional music career as they raised three daughters.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg grew up as an only child in New York City; her parents grieved the death of their first-born child at 14 months of age. She lived in a “low-income, working class” part of Brooklyn with an Italian, Irish, and Jewish demographic (6). Her parents were both immigrants—her father from Ukraine and her mother from Poland—who worked in the garment industry. Despite their low income, Celia Ginsburg made sure that her daughter could enjoy readings and plays at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; young Ruth also learned piano and cello. Celia Ginsburg set high academic standards for Ruth and expected her to be a straight-A student. She died the day before Ruth graduated as class valedictorian from her high school.

Totenberg reveals that Ginsburg tended to be reserved about her childhood and shared little about it, except to fondly remember her favorite places, such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ginsburg also remembered supporting the US war effort through victory gardening, quilt making, and saving stamps for bonds. Ginsburg went on to attend Cornell University on a scholarship. While a student, she worked as a research assistant for Robert Cushman, a Constitutional Law professor who helped her understand the personal and legal violations being perpetrated by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist agenda. Cushman’s cause inspired Ginsburg to pursue a career in law. At Cornell, she also met her husband, Marty Ginsburg. Shortly after marrying, the Ginsburgs moved to Oklahoma, as Marty had been conscripted into the army. Ruth found work at the Social Security Administration but was fired when she became pregnant.

Totenberg recalls her more financially comfortable upbringing, which was punctuated by interesting dinner parties with her parents’ many friends and acquaintances. She admits that she was not a star student, but she became interested in politics at a young age and often read news magazines. Her mother was an acquaintance of Eleanor Roosevelt and used this connection to get Totenberg an internship with the Democratic Study Group. This experience furthered Totenberg’s aspirations of becoming a journalist. After attending Boston University for several years, Totenberg dropped out and was hired as a writer for the Record American newspaper. Unhappy with her assignment at the “women’s page” discussing recipes and fashion, Totenberg helped the night reporter as an assistant. She recalls pitching a story to her editor about contraception, which was illegal in Massachusetts at that time, and being turned down. Totenberg then worked for The Peabody Times, covering a range of stories, from bank robberies to criminal cases and the 1968 presidential primary. Totenberg felt largely ostracized by the male journalists who covered the primary news and was happy to befriend The New York Times reporter Nan Robertson. Totenberg recalls her delight at being hired at The National Observer, reporting on politics and law.

Ginsburg also encountered blatant sexism in her education and job search. After graduating as one of 12 female students from Columbia Law School, she could not find any work until her professor, Gerald Gunther, persuaded a judge to allow her to clerk for him. Because she could not find work at a private law firm when her clerkship was over, Ginsburg accepted a position at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, where she earned substantially less than her male colleagues. Totenberg recalls her own struggle to persuade her bosses at The National Observer to pay her as much as an inexperienced male colleague; she also endured sexual harassment from other employees and acquaintances. At work parties, such as the White House Correspondents Dinner, Totenberg would go to the bathroom to write down notes and observations in private.

In 1971, Totenberg wrote a profile on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover criticized the piece and demanded that The National Observer fire Totenberg. However, with the support of her editor, Totenberg held her position. Hoover opened an FBI file on her, which made her feel “paranoid” at the time, but she later accessed the file and found it negligible. In the 1970s, two Supreme Court Justices died, leaving President Nixon with two Supreme Court positions to fill. Totenberg used her political connections to find the list of potential nominees and researched their legal opinions. Lacking a background in law, Totenberg had to learn on the job, which made her feel like an “interloper” but also helped her write articles for everyday readers (33).

While covering a Supreme Court case, Totenberg learned that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had asked Ruth Bader Ginsburg to write a brief for the case Reed v. Reed, which challenged an Idaho law which “automatically preferred men over women as the executors of estates” (34). Totenberg called Ginsburg, who explained each aspect of her legal argument, which was based on the 14th Amendment and guarantees equal protection to all persons. The author lists a variety of discriminatory laws in the US that persisted into the 1970s, effectively preventing women from equally accessing bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and mortgages. The Supreme Court Justices agreed with Ginsburg’s argument and struck down the law. This decision triggered a sea change in American law, since women could no longer legally be discriminated against “on the basis of sex” in their employment, access to financial services, property law, and more (38). Totenberg continued to call Ginsburg as part of her journalistic research, and they later met her in person at a legal conference.

The author recalls how much she enjoyed shopping with Ginsburg, who had an appreciation for clothes and personal presentation. Totenberg praises Ginsburg’s natural beauty and notes that she often wore beautiful outfits and jewelry to formal dinners, which was “the exact opposite of what professional women were advised to do,” since it made her stand out (43). In the early 1970s, Ginsburg accepted a job at Columbia University Law School and became involved with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.

Totenberg recalls enduring sexual harassment from the executive editor at The National Observer, which she felt she had no way to address as “it was just what was accepted and tolerated by women in the workplace at that time” (46). Totenberg was fired from the paper for not lifting quotations from another newspaper’s article without crediting it. She was hired by the New Times and continued to cover the Supreme Court, writing an article entitled “The Supreme Court: The Last Plantation,” which exposed the discriminatory behavior of the judges toward the Court’s Black staff. Totenberg and Ginsburg continued to stay in touch over the phone throughout the mid-1970s, and when Jimmy Carter became president, Ginsburg was hired as a federal judge in Washington, DC.

Totenberg recalls befriending Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. She explains that while Powell had been expected to make conservative decisions, he was a “very firm supporter of abortion rights” (54). Totenberg reflects on how each of the Justices she met were “complex individuals” with their own complicated personal histories and perspectives (55). While these judges did not provide Totenberg with private information, they did help to explain how the Court functioned, and she felt it was “worth getting to know the people [she] covered” (55). The author reflects on the different work and political climate in those days; she reveals that the Supreme Court Justices had an ongoing poker game with President Harry Truman, and that this tradition “continued well into the Reagan years” (56). She acknowledges that some people would consider this ethically problematic, while also considering that Washington, DC may have simply been more “collegial” in the 1960s and 1970s (57). Totenberg argues that while judges can aim for fairness, it is impossible for them to be completely objective, since everyone’s reasoning is rooted in their own personal experience.

Totenberg recalls work being a “lonely” place for her, as it was rare to work with a woman colleague or report on women (58). However, when Totenberg began working at the NPR, she was pleasantly surprised to meet many female colleagues “holding important jobs” (58). She immediately felt a close kinship with her colleagues and contributed to the mutually supportive work environment among the female staff at NPR.