Just as many Jews in the Unit­ed States were sit­ting down to a post-sun­set Rosh Hashanah din­ner on Fri­day, prepar­ing to dip apples in hon­ey to sig­nal the sweet­ness of the year to come, news came of Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s death. Gins­burg, the first female Jew­ish mem­ber of the U.S. Supreme Court, died on one of the holi­est days in Judaism, as many of the country’s near­ly six mil­lion Jews wel­comed the new year 5781, based on the Hebrew cal­en­dar. “I heard of Ruth’s death while I was recit­ing the Mourner’s Kad­dish at the Rosh Hashanah ser­vice,” fel­low Supreme Court Jus­tice Stephen G. Brey­er said in a state­ment, refer­ring to a prayer in mem­o­ry of the dead.