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WORKING TOGETHER: Judge Noach Dear and law clerk Deema Azizi inside
Dear’s chambers at the Kings County Supreme Court.
Photo by Maya Harrison
COURIER L 16 IFE, FEB. 8–14, 2019 M BR B G
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BY MAYA HARRISON AND
NATALLIE ROCHA
This Kings County Supreme
Court justice and his law clerk
rule in favor of peaceful coexistence.
Judge Noach Dear, an Orthodox
Jew, and his court attorney
Deema Azizi, a Syrian
Muslim, have been turning
heads at the Supreme Court
since they began working together
two years ago, Dear
told this newspaper.
“When people see Deema
for the fi rst time, they always
do a double take,” he said.
“With the response, ‘What a
combination, an Orthodox Jew
with a Syrian Muslim woman
— it’s unbelievable.’ ”
Dear, who wears a yarmulke
daily, said that he and
Azizi, who dons a hijab every
day, talk openly about how
their backgrounds overlap,
including their shared commitments
to wearing religious
garb, keeping religious-based
diets, and daily prayer.
“I could identify with her
and her appearance because
I wear a yarmulke,” the judge
said. “Religious women who
cover their hair are often not
afforded the same opportunities
by the way that they dress,
and because of their backgrounds.”
Career-advancing opportunities,
however, have not been
few and far between for Azizi.
The clerk previously served
two judicial internships with
magistrate judges in Brooklyn
and Manhattan, and worked
with clients locked up in the
country’s notorious Guantanamo
Bay prison in Cuba as
a student at the City of New
York School of Law.
But her family’s escape
from their native Syria to the
United States, and the resilience
she learned from that
journey, played an equally important
role as her legal experience
did in landing Azizi her
current clerkship, Dear said.
Azizi, whose family fl ed
Syria when she was a child,
said her early years spent living
under a dictator inspired
her to pursue a legal career,
so she could learn how to advocate
for herself and others
like her.
“My family escaped when
I was 6-years-old,” said Azizi,
who grew up in Bay Ridge.
“We did escape that dictatorship
in Syria and we came
here for freedom. I am grateful
for Judge Dear because he
gave me the opportunity to
be here. He boosted my confi -
dence in my capabilities by accepting
me for who I am.”
The key to Dear and Azizi’s
success as a team is their ability
to present themselves in
“an approachable, kind, professional
way,” according to
the judge’s Senior Court Clerk
Suzanne Marsh, who said she
has worked with him for three
years, and forged her own
friendship with Azizi in that
time.
“They really came in as
working people without any
pre-judgement and that’s, I
think, a big part of going forward
as a team,” Marsh said.
“That’s the way a courtroom
runs — no pre-judgement.”
Dear and Azizi hope that
by bringing the mutual admiration
and respect they have
for one another into the courtroom,
they will inspire even
more diversity within the legal
community, the clerk said.
“I think we need more diversity
in the court system, because
we need to recognize that
everyone who walks into the
courtroom deserves to be recognized
and heard,” Azizi said.
This duo rules!
Orthodox judge, Muslim law clerk lead by example
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