The Old Testament praises the biblical king renowned for wisdom. His contemporary counterpart is a Queen Solomon, who dishes out justice and acerbic comments in equal measure, threatening to cut the baby in half to determine the real mother. As befits the times, the act is carried out from a television screen, not a throne, and publicists, rather than prophets, hail the diminutive septuagenarian.
In a nod to Fate―possessor of a vivid imagination―who would have guessed a Jewish girl from pre-women’s-liberation Brooklyn would, in later life, become the doyenne of prime time? A star was born as Judith Susan Blum, daughter of Ethel, a homemaker, and Murray, a dentist, whom Judith described as “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” She traced her sense of humor to her dad’s dental practice, as, in the era before sedation, he distracted his patients by kibitzing and storytelling. Judy’s lifelong best friend, Elaine Schwartz, recalled that Mrs. Blum “ran her husband’s business, their lives, ran everything for the betterment of everything.” Judith referred to her mother as “a meat and potato type of gal,” the glue that held the family together. A serious student at the local James Madison High School, Judy loved to dance with her father to the sound of Sinatra LPs and bonded with her mother bargain-hunting at Loehmann’s department store. David came along six years later, and the Blums vacationed at Catskills resorts where, Judy recalls, “My parents schlepped me around, so I would meet some nice rich guy.” After all, for a girl of her background in the 1950s, the Holy Grail was an engagement ring. Possessed of an academic bent, she majored in government and attended New York Law School, the only female in a class of 126 students. By the time she graduated in 1965, she had wed attorney Ronald Levy. Her first job was as an attorney for a cosmetic firm; unhappy in the position, she quit and became a stay-at-home mother to Jamie and Adam. After moving to the suburbs, she felt stifled, and by 1972, Judy had returned to work. Mayor Ed Koch appointed her a family court judge, making her one of the first female judges in the country, and she presided over a Bronx family court. An endless parade appeared before her bench: battered infants, sexually abused minors, ugly custody battles, kids who raped at ten and murdered at eleven. Her trademark bluster came from prosecuting forty cases a day. Judy recalled, “I couldn’t indulge people. It was like, ‘You want a cathartic experience, get a shrink.’” Based on the low-wattage excuses Judy heard daily, she wrote Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining: America’s Toughest Family Court Judge Speaks Out. The title came from a comment she yelled at a teenage boy who claimed he began selling drugs after a death in his family. Her rejoinder, “Nobody goes out and sells crack because Grandma died. Get a better story!”
Four years later, Judy left her husband after twelve years of marriage. Her explanation for the marital breakdown: “We had different visions. He said, ‘You work for fun, I work for a living.’ It was a house full of friction and fighting over minutiae.”
Three weeks after her divorce, Judy stopped in at Peggy Doyle’s, a bar near the courts, where she met Jerry Sheindlin, a criminal defense lawyer. With her characteristic chutzpah, she “took one look, stuck my finger in his face and asked my girlfriend, ‘Who’s this?’ Sometimes it just comes over you, an initial physical attraction, and that’s what it was.” Her two children and his three―Jerry had been separated from his wife Suzanne for four years―became an extended family. However, Judy was never Mrs. Brady from The Brady Bunch. When Adam asked for a hot lunch, his mother found a kosher pizzeria and gave him a slice with thumbtacks by telling him, “Stick this above the radiator. By noon you’ll have a hot lunch.” She informed her kids that, even if they wouldn’t get tall from McDonald’s, they wouldn’t die from it either. Judge Judy was never cut out for the role of a chambermaid. After she proposed, the couple married a year later in the Library suite of the St. Regis Hotel. How did she “pop the question?” Judy said to Jerry, “Get out your datebook.” What chance did Jerry have against Hurricane Judith?
At age seventy, when Murray died, grief from her father’s passing eroded their marriage, and Judy once again became a divorcee. However, her ruling was not final. A year later, Judy called Elaine and told her to wash her face, as the couple were tying the knot once more within the hour. Judy’s take on the traditional vow: “For better or forget it.”
Judge Sheindlin had assumed that, after retirement, she would lead a quiet life in Florida, the typical destination for Jewish seniors. Mahjongg, bingo, and early-bird specials were no longer in the game plan when a 1993 60 Minutes episode captured her on camera. The audience ate up her signature tapping of her head while asking, “Does it say ‘schmuck’ here?” In her mid-fifties, while others are winding down, Sheindlin was ready to launch her second act.
Judge Judy premiered in 1996, a show on which the five-foot-one-inch, ninety-five-pound star of the bar sported a lace-trimmed judicial robe; its announcer opened each segment with the pronouncement, “Justice with an attitude.” An example of this ’tude was when the judge told a nineteen-year-old man who did not seem to be exerting himself to support his children, “You made two babies. There have to be other parts of your body that work, sir.” When two parties fought over the custody of a dog, Judge Sheindlin let the pooch run to the one it loved. Viewers adored the human polygraph whose mantra is that she has no time for stupid. The show catapulted her from New York family court judge to pop culture icon. America rose for the bench-mensch, and in its opening season, the show garnered the largest audience of any syndicated daytime program, crushing the competition from Oprah to Springer. The real-life small claims brought huge paydays that contrasted with her Manhattan judge salary of $113,000 per year. With her newfound wealth, in lieu of the West Coast condo, Judy owns five luxury homes, a Mercedes, and a private jet. She sold her yacht, Triumphant Lady, for $6.9 million. Sheindlin quips, regarding her many-splendored bank account, “We don’t take Sweet ’n’ Lows from restaurants anymore. I don’t stuff dinner rolls into my pocketbook.” However, some old habits never die, and she still eats her ritual Egg McMuffin, though now her chauffeur deposits her at the fast-food chain. Another tradition that has not changed is her iron discipline. Judy rises at 5:30 a.m., when she completes her twenty-minute workout in ten minutes. Her exercise routine is one of the reasons why she rocked a white bikini on her seventieth birthday, during a family vacation in the Bahamas.
The daytime doyenne’s common theme, even when court has been adjourned, is to battle against what she calls “the dumbness of women who defer to men.” Her argument is that husbands have a built-in helplessness, and the wives who enable them, unless they’re Mother Teresa, will eventually explode. She remains mystified when women turn against one another to fight over an alcoholic man who has a chronic spot on the unemployment line. This philosophy led to her second book Beauty Fades, Dumb is Forever: The Making of a Happy Woman. Among her huge fan base was the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who made the semi-serious suggestion that she should be a candidate to fill Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the country’s highest bench. Despite Sheindlin’s impatience with ignorance, a survey showed that ten percent of college students believe Judge Judy has a seat on the Supreme Court.
The queen bee of reality television has been on the air for twenty-one seasons and garners an average of ten million viewers per day. Her longevity with crime and punishment has paid off; her contract pays her a $47-million yearly salary that she negotiated till 2020. She supplemented this salary when she sold her show’s archives to CBS for $95 million. Not too shabby a remuneration for informing defendants that “ummmm” is not a word and yelling at people in a fake court for their grammar and questionable life choices. Part of the appeal of the program is watching the scourge of the shiftless in action, an authentic robed avenger from the Justice League. Viewers find it satisfying to watch the less-than-stellar defendants get fricasseed; they are never adept at pulling the wool over the judge’s eagle eye. Sheindlin met one of her fans when she attended a Shoah foundation dinner where President Obama was slated to win a humanitarian award. During the evening, she shook hands with the President. Asked by a nearby guest if he had ever watched her show, the Chief Executive responded, “Who doesn’t love Judge Judy?”
Laurels have been planted on Sheindlin’s brow topped with frosted, teased hair: In 1996, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 2016 an Emmy, and in Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David stood before the formidable Judge Judy. In youth-obsessed TV, the seventy-five-year-old says she will only adjourn when the fun is gone and based on “How well my face is holding up.” For her, retirement is something for other people.
Judith Sheindlin is a role model, and not because of her eye-popping income. Admiration stems from her entering law school when the legal field was a testosterone-dominated domain, and for donning a black robe rather than going quietly into a Florida sunset. In addition, transitioning from a Bronx courthouse to a Hollywood set took chutzpah. And, for those who are apprehensive that a career means tossing family on the altar of ambition, Judy proves this is not the case. Judith has remained in her long-term second/third marriage and is a fierce mother and grandmother to her dozen grandchildren. Another feather in her cap is that she has not let age slow her down, and thus, she remains the long-running queen of reality television. And who knows what else lies under the sleeve of her judicial robe?
Sheindlin’s take on why her show is a viewer-grabbing machine is, “I move swiftly, as opposed to a justice system that is slow and meandering.” Her appeal is that she offers people a fantasy―a legal system as they would like it to be: fast and fair. Moreover, in a world steeped in chaos, with the septuagenarian wielding the gavel, Judge Judy maintains order in the court.