When Judge Rachel “Ruchie” Freier takes her seat on the bench for the New York City Civil Court beneath the words “In God We Trust,” she feels she is fulfilling a promise she made years ago while still a law student.
“I made a deal with Hashem: ‘Please help me get through law school without compromising my values and I will help your children’,” said Freier, the first Chasidic woman to be elected as a civil court judge in New York State and the first Chasidic woman to ever hold public office in the United States.
During a program on Zoom, she spoke of those values, the challenges of juggling college and law school and undertaking a legal career while raising six children, and the sexism she faced in that role and as founder of Ezras Nashim—the first all-women volunteer ambulance corps in New York City.
The January 12 program was the 2022 Distinguished Lecture for the Touro Law Center’s Jewish Law Institute conducted by Touro College and University System President Dr. Alan Kadish.
Freier, who began attending Touro as an undergraduate at age 30 with the dream of becoming a lawyer, encountered lots of naysayers along the way, including female friends in her community who scoffed at the long path ahead of her.
“You know what,” she said. “Ten years later we were all 40 and I was a lawyer.”
Growing up in tight-knit Borough Park, Freier never set out to become a trailblazer and the subject of the 2018 documentary “93Queen,” about the effort to establish the EMS team. A licensed paramedic, she readily admitted she sleeps only five to six hours a night but catches up on Shabbat.
Kadish, in reading what he called a “remarkable biography,” mentioned the moniker The New York Times gave her: “The Hasidic superwoman of night court.”
Freier downplayed her groundbreaking achievements, which she stressed were all reached without compromising her religious values.
After graduating Bais Yaakov High School, Frier began working as a legal secretary to support her husband, David, while he studied. After her husband graduated from Touro, Freier made a startling realization: “I was vicariously living through him.”
“But a little voice within me was getting louder and louder,” explained Freier, and she enrolled as a college student, taking six years to get her undergraduate degree followed by four years at Brooklyn Law School.
“I think law is part of my DNA,” she remarked.
As an undergraduate, Freier feared telling anyone she wanted to go to law school, but that calling only got stronger as she developed a passion for political science. Having small children, including toddler twins, when she entered law school proved no deterrence and she finished in four years instead of the usual three.
“It was brutal for me but the fact that I made it to law school, I feel so lucky,” she said. “I had naysayers every step of the way who said I could not finish and if I did, I would not get clients.”
Her husband is her biggest supporter and when she decided to run for the civil court position in 2016, he “maxed out credit cards” and campaigned relentlessly in shuls to bring out somewhat reluctant male voters.
Freier said she has held steadfast to all religious restrictions in her professional life.
“I conform to all the rules,” she said, which includes dressing modestly and being there for her husband, ensuring he can be regularly in synagogue. She also bakes and cooks. “I stay within my boundaries,” she said, stopping to pray three times daily, and has found that people respect those boundaries.
“I intentionally felt I wanted to be different in the workplace,” noted Freier, who made a point of emphasizing that a person needn’t give up their spirituality, values, integrity and honesty to be successful. “When you stand up for your values, people respect you.” That respect is a two-way street.
She said she regularly shows up for work on Friday with a challah to show her appreciation to co-workers for respecting why she leaves work early that day for Shabbat. Freier welcomes their questions because, after all, “if people don’t ask questions they make assumptions.”
After her election, Freier was shocked to be assigned to criminal court, where she encountered a world very different from her own sheltered Borough Park community. She presided over numerous cases involving youths, using Jewish concepts of compassion and justice in dealing with them. After two years she went back to civil court.
“I always say I love my job,” she said as she presides over land tenant disputes, family matters and commercial issues.
Freier is no stranger to taking on challenges. In 2005 she established Chasdei Devorah, Inc., a nonprofit charity organization to help poor Jewish families; in 2008 she was one of the founders of B’Derech, a GED program for at-risk youth.
“I thought, ‘What would my next job be?’” she said. “I didn’t know it would be an EMT.”
After Hatzolah refused her 2011 request to open up to female volunteers Freier applied for a license for a separate female EMS service. “It was all about modesty and women in emergency labor situations where she is so vulnerable and needs her dignity,” explained Freier. “She should have the choice to have a woman.”
However, Freier was not prepared for the opposition, with some labeling her a “radical feminist.” “I was not doing this for women’s rights,” she explained with some amusement, but rather allowing women to help other women. Her reaction was to take her mother with her to the grueling training courses and become an EMT.
Freier took the matter to Albany with other women and gained the support of the New York City Fire Department. The men opposing them never could come up with a valid reason for their opposition and in 2011 Ezras Nashim started with 20 women. It now has 50 volunteers.
“It was never a power competition,” said Freier, falling back on the mantra that has guided her in all her endeavors, “It happened because Hashem wants it to happen.”
Judge Rachel “Ruchie” Freier has carved out a legal career and founded an all-women ambulance corps while never straying from her strict Chasidic religious values.
