The controversy, however, left me with a question: What does it mean to be Jewish in America? And what, especially, does it mean to be Jewish right now?

I can’t answer for R.B.G. But most Jews will tell you that a Jewish identity has little to do with whether you keep kosher or attend services every Friday, and everything to do with your culture, your ethnicity; with the way you see the world and the way the world sees you. It is an identity we can’t slip, even if we want to.

From what I can tell, Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t want to. She might not have been a regular at synagogue or at Sisterhood meetings, but she lived a Jewish life.

She was, for starters, a mensch, a boss who treated her clerks like family, serving them birthday cakes (that her husband baked) and helping them find partners. A piece of Jewish lore holds that a Jew who makes three successful matches automatically ascends to the highest level of heaven. I’d give the justice extra credit for not just making those matches but officiating at some of their marriages.

Jewish values run through her writings like a shining thread. If you’ve been excluded, you fight for inclusion. If you’ve been made to feel less-than, because of your gender or your sexual orientation or your race or your religion, you stand up for others who’ve been denied a seat at the table. The notion of tikkun olam, that the world is broken and that each of us has a role in its repair, is a value that would lead someone to a life like hers. It is a value that overlaps with the highest American ideals.

As a woman, as a feminist, as the mother of daughters, as a Jew, I am devastated that we won’t have Justice Ginsburg as our advocate and role model. In the days of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, her presence on the bench was a symbol of progress, a crucial step in the right direction. In the days of Donald Trump — an era that has brought us rising incidents of anti-Semitism, and the Tree of Life massacre — she was a bulwark.

She was also a living, breathing rebuke to a president who saw “very fine people” on both sides of a white-power rally where one side chanted “Jews will not replace us” — a president who has allegedly complained about Jewish clannishness and ingratitude for everything he’s done for Israel, which, by the way, is the country to which he seems to think our primary allegiance lies.

I haven’t become significantly more observant in the last four years. But I have never felt more Jewish. The rise in anti-Semitism, the torrents of toxic online abuse directed toward Jewish women, the idea that Jews are not “really” Americans — all of it has only rooted me more deeply in my faith and my identity, and made me more committed to Jewish values.

In this terrible year of so much sorrow, losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg — and losing her on the eve of Rosh Hashana, at the start of the High Holy Days, at the end of an old year and on the cusp of a new one — felt especially painful. It’s hard not to give into the despair of worst-case scenarios: that Mr. Trump will lie about the election results, that his Republican enablers will cheer him on, that our democracy will die, not in darkness, but at the Supreme Court.