(JTA) — Micah Blay confessed that blowing a large shofar in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for some 250 people was “definitely like kind of scary.”
Micah, 11, accompanied his mother, activist Dana Marlowe, on Saturday to the Washington, D.C., building from their suburban Maryland home to pay their respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Marlowe said her son blew the shofar several more times as more and more people arrived at the site, and that he was performing a mitzvah for Rosh Hashanah.
They also brought stones on behalf of nearly 300 people to lay in front of the building in lieu of placing them on her gravesite.
Marlowe told the “Good Morning Washington” show on WJLA-Ch. 7 that she also printed out several copies of the Mourner’s Kaddish to say at the Supreme Court in honor of Ginsburg.
Ginsburg “is one of my heroes — as a feminist icon, as a changemaker for society for decades and decades,” Marlowe said.
She said she and her family “were literally dipping ceremonial apples into honey” at the start of the Rosh Hashanah holiday “when my phone started blowing up” with messages.
Marlowe tweeted that she was “devastated” to hear of Ginsburg’s passing and decided immediately to make a pilgrimage to the Supreme Court the following day, the first day of Rosh Hashanah.
“It was shock and heartbreak and I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
Micah added that the family was “doing the right thing” in deciding to spend one day of Rosh Hashanah in front of the Supreme Court honoring “a great person” like Ginsburg.
