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Judge for the State of Illinois Addresses Sophomore Girls
After learning Parshat Mishpatim in sophomore girls’ Bible with Mrs. Ray, the class was privileged to hear from Dr. Vivian Gordon, an administration law judge for the State of Illinois in school law. Dr. Gordon, who lives in West Rogers Park, described to the girls mitzvot from Parshat Mishpatim, such as not taking bribes, that apply to her own profession. In her first day on the job, one of the attorneys asked her how was her lunch. It was this short conversation that made the opposing attorney object that an attorney had been conversing with the judge. From that day on, Dr. Gordon has never eaten in the same room as one party in the case and never accepts food or drink offers from parties related to a case. She goes so far as to refuse to ever be in the same room as only one party in a case. “I became famous for this. This is Mishpatim,” she says. “[Being a judge] felt like an honor for one day and from then on I recognized it was a huge responsibility.” Dr. Gordon was appointed 18 years ago to be one of 10 judges to hear cases involving school districts throughout the state by the then-governor of Illinois. And as a frum woman who was abo  ut to become a judge for the State of Illinois, Dr. Gordon first met with HaRav Gedalia Dov Schwartz, shlita for advice. She described to him her prospective job and left the meeting with the plan to explain to the governor before accepting the position that she is an Orthodox Jew and cannot work on Shabbat or Yom Tov. “I learned from that experience,” says Dr. Gordon, “that as smart as I think I am with a Ph.D. and a law degree, I learned that I still have to look to daat Torah for answers.”The class listened with great interest as Dr. Gordon described her experiences as a judge and some of the lessons she has learned. “[As a judge] you don’t have the authority to tell people to go work things out. You only have authority to decide. So you have to have courage.” Many of the cases Dr. Gordon has heard throughout her career involved school districts in small farm towns, where the nearest grocery was a town away. Dr. Gordon described to the girls what it is like to bring her own food for the trip and to sit through dinners where she could not eat. For many of the people involved in her cases, Dr. Gordon was the only Jew they ever met. Although she recently partially retired, Dr. Gordon still hears cases related to teacher dismissals and is a law professor at Loyola. Dr. Gordon explained to the girls that a major issue in the cases the school law judges hear today relates to the Internet. Recently, Dr. Gordon was invited at the order of the Queen of England to speak at the Oxford Round Table on the subject. She reiterated to the girls that there is no privacy on the Internet, “Any message, photo or video that you ever post to the Internet is accessible to everyone forever.” After speaking to the class, Dr. Gordon said, “My goal was to tell [the students] that our mesorah guides us even in our secular lives. I daven every day to make the right decision because my decisions always affect people, schools and children.” |
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