BONUS QUESTION
In addition to our weekly Monday trivia question, we are pleased to present a bonus Thursday question.
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Merrick Garland, who if approved would be the 4th Jewish person to sit on the current United States Supreme Court, was not the first member of his family to receive an appointment from a president. What relative of his shares that honor?
Supreme Court Authority of Law Statue by Matt Wade is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
A. As Merrick Garland said in his speech on the White House lawn, his maternal grandfather, Irving Horowitz, came to America from the Pale of Settlement in the early 1900’s. At the same time, Irving’s brother Sam went to Palestine and settled in Jerusalem. His grandson, Dr. Yishai Horowitz, a surgeon, was appointed in 1973 by Israeli president Ephraim Katzir to be head of the Magen David Adom, Israel’s version of the Red Cross.
B. Samuel Irving Rosenman, a relative of Garland’s wife Lynn Rosenman Garland, was a lawyer who was active in Democratic politics in New York in the early 1900’s. He served in the New York State Assembly throughout most of the 1920’s, and in 1932 was appointed to the New York Supreme Court by then-governor and eventual president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
C. Garland’s mother, Shirley Horowitz Garland, worked for many years as the director of volunteer services at Chicago’s Council for Jewish Elderly. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the Board of Directors of the National Council on Aging, where she served for seven years.
D. Howard Rosenman, a relative of Garland’s wife Lynn Rosenman Garland, is a Hollywood producer of such films as Father of the Bride and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Following the controversy over the lack of diversity in Academy Awards nominations, he was appointed last month by Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a committee whose task is to study this issue, with a goal of recommending improvements to the Oscar nominating process.
E. In 1910, Merrick Garland’s maternal grandfather, Jacob Horowitz, emigrated from the Pale of Settlement to America, settling on the Lower East Side of New York. He worked as an itinerant peddler, and eventually saved enough money to open a storefront. In need of a location for his shop, Horowitz asked his apartment landlord to get him an appointment with the president of the real estate company that owned his building, Friedrich Drumpf. Horowitz went to the appointment, where Mr. Drumpf proceeded to yell at him about immigrants and all the problems they were causing, finally ending the meeting by yelling, “Get out. Get him out. Go back to Russia.”