Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on December 31, 2016

NYC judge is first Hasidic Jewish woman in U.S. public office

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, December 26, 2016, 11:40 PM

The people of Brooklyn are used to making history and they did it again this year after voting in the countrys first Hasidic Jewish woman to serve in public office.

Its an incredible feeling, said Rachel Freier, who was sworn in just last week as a New York City Civil Court judge.

Freier, a real estate attorney and community activist, was endorsed in the September Democratic primaries by the Daily News to beat attorneys Morton Avigdor and Jill Epstein for Brooklyns 5th Judicial District seat.

One of my missions is to prove to the girls out there that you can be devotedly religious and not have to compromise your standards to be successful in the business or professional world, said Freier, a Touro College and Brooklyn Law School graduate.

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In November, Freier won in a landslide with 74% of the vote.

The Borough Park trailblazers 10-year term will officially begin Jan. 3.

Civil Court judges can be assigned to various lower court cases, including commercial landlord-tenant, small claims and civil motions.

I didnt become a lawyer until I was 40. I was an older student. I was an older first-year lawyer, always older. Now I finally caught up, said Freier, a mother of six.

I love my role as a woman. We dont have to lose our identity as women to become professionals, she added.

Freier said she thanks the pioneers of the civil rights movement and the United States for opening their doors to Holocaust survivors like her grandparents and parents.

Freier, 51, founded the first female volunteer ambulance service in Brooklyn called Ezras Nashim Hebrew for helping women and also volunteers with the Flatlands Ambulance Corp.

Freiers roles with those emergency units inspired her to become a paramedic in 2015.

It was an eye-opener for me because I was taking my experience from home and going out to the Canarsie community into peoples homes and catching them when theyre in a crisis, helping them and giving them care, said Freier, who hopes to continue volunteering.

Its an incredible feeling of taking what I learned from my home and helping someone from a different community, and I want to be able to do the same thing on the bench.

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