Jewish lesbian Roberta Kaplan is a prominent leftist attorney involved in lawfare against the Charlottesville demonstrators, against Donald Trump in the E. Jean Carrol case, as well as in victorious efforts on behalf of gay marriage. As I wrote in a previous article on Roberta Kaplan, she “is a good example of what makes Jewish activism so effective: smart, well-connected, hyper-aggressive, in the context of a court system sympathetic to her causes.” Well, her hyper-aggressiveness and general abrasiveness seems to have caught up with her, along with micromanagement (she seems to be a control freak).

I bring her up because I think she is a Jewish type and a big reason why the Jewish community is so successful. I am certainly not saying that all Jews are like this, but such people are important in whatever occupation they are in.

Jewish aggressiveness has long been noted as a general characteristic of Jews, e.g., here (pp. 26-30), seen also in Kaplan’s “relentless … pursuit of success”:

In early twentieth-century America, the sociologist Edward A. Ross commented on a greater tendency among Jewish immigrants to maximize their advantage in all transactions, ranging from Jewish students badgering teachers for higher grades to Jewish poor attempting to get more than the usual charitable allotment. “No other immigrants are so noisy, pushing and disdainful of the rights of others as the Hebrews.” The authorities complain that the East European Hebrews feel no reverence for law as such and are willing to break any ordinance they find in their way. . . . The insurance companies scan a Jewish fire risk more closely than any other. Credit men say the Jewish merchant is often “slippery” and will “fail” in order to get rid of his debts. For lying the immigrant has a very bad reputation. In the North End of Boston “the readiness of the Jews to commit perjury has passed into a proverb.”

The other thing that’s obvious here is that Kaplan is depicted as interpersonally abrasive. Clearly, she doesn’t care whether other people like her, especially I suppose if she is in a superior position. For Jews, being disliked by non-Jews goes with the territory. In traditional Jewish ethics, non-Jews have no moral standing and their opinions don’t matter unless they threaten the individual Jew or the Jewish group as a whole. On the other hand, most White people–and especially White women—care deeply about being liked, resulting I think stems from their evolutionary history.

The New York Times:

Prominent Lawyer Roberta Kaplan Departs Firm After Clash With Colleagues

The well-connected attorney, who founded a powerhouse firm at the dawn of the #MeToo era, has faced complaints that she mistreated and insulted other lawyers.

… Her departure followed months of internal frustration over Ms. Kaplan’s conduct toward other lawyers, according to people familiar with the matter. Those concerns led her colleagues to remove her from the firm’s management committee and precipitated her departure. …

Ms. Kaplan and her wife are deeply connected to the Democratic Party and she has been a heroic figure to many liberal activists. In addition to litigating the Supreme Court case that laid the groundwork for the national legalization of gay marriage, she became a leader of the #MeToo movement. …

Another Times article, “How a Trump-Beating, #MeToo Legal Legend Lost Her Firm.”:

In the eyes of many of her colleagues, including the firm’s two other named partners, Ms. Kaplan’s poor treatment of other lawyers — ranging from micromanagement to vulgar insults and humiliating personal attacks — was impairing the boutique firm she had built, the people said. For one thing, they said, she was jeopardizing its ability to recruit and retain valuable employees. …

Many former employees said they were proud of the work they had done and admired Ms. Kaplan’s fearless pursuit of big targets. But they also said the workplace environment she had presided over could be unbearable. This went beyond normal gripes about tough bosses. Ms. Kaplan’s behavior was at times such an issue that a top lawyer at another firm who was her co-counsel in a case reprimanded her over her conduct, and a progressive legal coalition nixed her from a list of candidates for federal judgeships because of her reputation for mistreating employees, according to lawyers familiar with both episodes. …

Like many other ambitious young corporate lawyers, Ms. Kaplan was relentless in her pursuit of success — so much so that her future wife, Rachel Lavine, a Democratic operative, once offended her on an early date by comparing her to a Bolshevik willing to spill blood for the sake of victory. …

Ms. Kaplan’s timing was impeccable. She pitched her firm as a progressive bastion that would combine trailblazing public interest practice with civil and criminal litigation. The goal was to win big rewards for worthy causes while also making its lawyers rich. The cherry on top: The firm was run by a legal giant in a field largely bereft of female leaders, much less gay women. Liberal lawyers jostled to join. …

From the start, Ms. Kaplan’s behavior alienated some of her new hires.

“Robbie was a screamer, she yelled a lot, and that was not an experience I had before,” said Christopher Greene, who had joined from the powerhouse law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. “Now it was part of my day to day, and the office wasn’t big.”

Many former employees recalled hearing Ms. Kaplan berating colleagues for their supposed incompetence and lack of intelligence. (Most would speak only on the condition that The Times not identify them, citing fear of professional repercussions.)

In the midst of the #MeToo movement, Ms. Kaplan told colleagues that she was too smart to ever have been sexually assaulted, according to Seguin Strohmeier, another early hire, and two other former associates who also heard the remarks.

Ms. Kaplan’s lawyers said in a letter to The Times that she had never “suggested that anyone can be ‘too smart’ to be sexually assaulted because that is obviously not true.”

ORDER IT NOW

Five employees at the firm recalled inappropriate comments Ms. Kaplan made about colleagues’ looks. Once, she told a female associate that the associate was more suited to “back of house” work because of her appearance. Another time, Ms. Kaplan said the same associate was too much of a “dyke” to clerk for the Supreme Court, Ms. Strohmeier recalled. Other times she used gender-specific insults.

Ms. Kaplan’s lawyers denied that she criticized employees’ appearances and said she “is hardly the only experienced trial lawyer prone to salty language at times.”

Many former employees recalled Ms. Kaplan’s publicly berating case managers, who are young, low-ranking employees. Once she verbally attacked a case manager who disobeyed her command not to include meatballs in a pizza order. Ms. Kaplan’s fury was so remarkable that a lawyer took notes, which The Times reviewed. The notes described the meatball incident as one of a few examples in which Ms. Kaplan “publicly derided” the case manager “both to her face and behind her back.”

Mr. Clark and Ms. Tent, the lawyers for Ms. Kaplan, said this was inaccurate. “To the extent Ms. Kaplan gave instruction about what food to order, it was typically to order too much rather than too little food,” they wrote.

To the frustration of some colleagues, Ms. Kaplan at times insisted that she review in advance certain emails that partners planned to send externally. On occasion, she became irate when this edict was violated. …

Near the end of 2021, Ms. Kaplan’s lawsuit against the white supremacists in Charlottesville went to trial. It was a high-stress environment; Ms. Kaplan was targeted with antisemitic threats. She told some attorneys on the multi-firm team that they didn’t deserve their law degrees. She threatened to ruin one’s career.