Speech on Martin Luther King Day 2016

I wanted to share with you a speech that I delivered this past Monday, when I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Crozer-Chester Medical Center MLK Day event. I spoke after we laid a wreath at the entrance of a building that once housed the Crozer Seminary, where Dr. King himself studied in the 1950s. And Rev. Bayard Taylor, who invited me, is currently the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Chester, where Dr. King preached as a young seminarian! So it was truly an honor to speak to a community that feels great pride in their personal connection to the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Please feel free to write back and let me know what you think of the sermon. Thanks!

Speech at Crozer-Chester’s Martin Luther King Day Event

Monday, January 18, 2016

Dear Friends,

I am truly honored to have been asked to come and speak at this Martin Luther King Day of Service event. I will admit, it IS a little daunting to be speaking here, after the wreath laying and the video presentation; both reminders of the role that Dr. King played in this community. I know that it is with great pride that Chester residents speak of their connection to Dr. King, and I feel blessed to be here honoring his memory and his legacy today.

As you know, I am a rabbi, the religious leader of my Jewish community of Ohev Shalom, currently located in Wallingford, just up the road from here. I say "currently" because the congregation wasn't founded in Wallingford, it has its origins in Chester. Records have been found that show Jews living permanently in Chester as far back as 1859, and Ohev Shalom was first located at 3rd and Lloyd, then built a building at 8th and Welsh in 1920, and only moved out of Chester in 1965. Though the congregation relocated decades ago, we are still "OF Chester," and we are proud of our heritage. 

As you also heard a couple of minutes ago, I was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, JTS, in New York City. When religious leaders first came to Chester to serve its Jewish population, they came from JTS. Like Ohev Shalom, JTS also has a long and rich history, dating back well into the 1800s. One of the great leaders of JTS, in the mid-1950s, was a rabbi by the name of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who originally came from Germany, then lived in Poland, and eventually escaped the Nazi Regime of the Second World War, and came to New York to become one of the primary theologians and teachers at JTS. In those days, he was quite well-known around the country, even outside the Jewish community.

And one of the proudest things that all JTS students know about Rabbi Heschel, that students still speak of to this day, was his close personal friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The two men met in 1963, and according to Susannah Heschel, Rabbi Heschel’s daughter: “What brought them together was a piety that transcended differences, forged by their love of the Bible, especially the prophets.” 

And I will also share with you that anyone who studied at JTS is familiar with a famous picture, from the start of the Voting Rights March in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. In the middle, of course, is Dr. King, to his left is Ralph Bunche, undersecretary of the United Nations, and to HIS left is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I wish that there were more pictures of rabbis from the Jewish community and leaders from the African-American community marching arm-in-arm, but unfortunately we don’t see enough of those these days.

But Rabbi Heschel DID march with Dr. King, and it left a tremendous impression on him. There is a very well-known quote from Rabbi Heschel about the march – one that Jews aspire to emulate every time they engage in activism, civil rights, violence prevention, anti-poverty advocacy, or any other act of healing our world. Rabbi Heschel said: “When I marched in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.”

We sometimes erroneously believe that only our mouths can pray, or perhaps just our minds, hearts, or even souls. But Rabbi Heschel powerfully reminded us that activism, the work of our hands and feet, can also be praying, devoted service to the Almighty God of the Universe.

Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King agreed on many things. Susannah Heschel has written about how both men rejected the theology of Aristotle, who described God as the “unmoved Mover.” According to Aristotle, God pushed a button, or perhaps tipped the first domino, and then the world set off on its course, without any further influence – or concern – from God. “NO!” said Dr. King AND Rabbi Heschel. On the contrary, God is “the most moved Mover.” “God cares deeply about human beings and is pained by human acts of injustice and cruelty.” They each felt that deeply in their bones, and their lives are true testaments to living by the principles in which you believe.

I have to say, I really love how each man, each of these incredible leaders, emphasized the Biblical prophets. It is something I speak a lot about in my congregation, at Ohev Shalom. We sometimes, in the popular imagination, depict prophets as predictors of the future. We read the Biblical books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and we see visions of what will be, almost as if they were soothsayers or oracles, writing about things to come in the near future or sometime millennia off in the distance.

But I tell you now, we’ve got it all wrong. The role of the prophet was NEVER really to emphasize the future. They would foretell gloom or hope, depending on the audience, to try and spur the people to change RIGHT NOW. The point isn’t the vision; it’s what the vision is cautioning you about your actions TODAY, in this very moment.

And believe you me, it was TOUGH being a prophet. They would tell it like it is. They held up a mirror to society and demanded that people see themselves for who they were and how they were behaving. And when people in Ancient Israel would tell the prophet to stop, to keep those stupid predictions to themselves, the voice would only get louder. Sometimes prophets wished they could stop; wished they didn't have this impossible job. Jeremiah tells us, in chapter 20: “Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His Name. But His word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones.” Prophets had, and have, no choice. Once he or she sees the true nature of things, and sees the pain and suffering in the world, it has GOT to come out.

A prophet stands in the breach, caught between God and humanity. Sometimes the prophet speaks to us on God’s behalf, and sometimes to God on our behalf. It is a TOUGH job. You know, we’ve got a lot of clergy members in the room today, as well as nurses, doctors, orderlies, administrators; we all think WE have it rough; prophecy has us all beat!!

In March of 1968, just a few, short weeks before he was killed, Dr. King spoke to a gathering of rabbis, honoring Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel himself introduced his friend, Dr. King, and in those opening remarks he said the following: “Where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America.”

I think each of them saw the other as taking up the call of the prophets of Israel. They saw in one another a kindred soul, someone else who saw the way things were, and who could not refrain from speaking out against violence, oppression, hate, or injustice. They each felt that fire in their bones; perhaps it was comforting to see someone else who carried that same burden.

Dr. King was supposed to attend a Passover Seder in Rabbi Heschel’s home a few, short weeks after that ceremony. Instead, Rabbi Heschel found himself with the tragic and heart-breaking task of reading a psalm at Dr. King’s funeral.

As you are likely aware, Passover celebrates the story of the Exodus from Egypt. In fact, in the Jewish community right now, we are reading that story in our annual cycle of Biblical readings. Starting in the fall, Jews around the world read one small section of our Torah, the Five Books of Moses that are the first five books of our shared Bible, each week, so that we end up back in the fall at the end of Deuteronomy, ready to restart our cycle again at the beginning of Genesis.

This past Sabbath, we read the story of the final three plagues, rained down on the Egyptians by God, and then the glorious story of the Israelites finally escaping slavery.

In my sermon to the congregation, I highlighted one, single verse, often overlooked in this world-famous story. In Exodus, chapter 12, verse 37, we are told that “the Israelites journeyed from Rameses.” THAT, seemingly minor statement, is actually the precise moment where they finally leave. And that is NOT the verse I wanted to highlight. The NEXT verse informs us, “Moreover, a mixed multitude went up with them.” In Hebrew, the text uses the term “Erev Rav.” “A mixed multitude.”

I don’t know if you were already familiar with this statement. Perhaps you were. But if you weren't, it might have surprised you to hear that the Israelites, in fact, did not leave alone. MANY other people left with them. Other slaves, other disenfranchised people – probably captured in one Egyptian conquest or another – seized the opportunity and escaped bondage WITH the Israelites.

In my remarks to the congregation, I said: “Others threw their lot in with ours, and we took responsibility for their ultimate destiny. Our fates were intertwined, and this motley crew of former-slaves had to learn to coexist, and even rely on one another for their very survival.”

We cannot do this alone. None of us can. The story of the Exodus teaches us that we can only escape slavery and oppression together. As Dr. King so prophetically reminds us: “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” OUR lives, all of us in this room, in the city of Chester and the surrounding communities of Delaware County and beyond, our survival and success is dependent on one another. It is inescapable.

We are the Erev Rav, the mixed multitude. There are A LOT of things that enslave and oppress us, but like the ancient Israelites and their fellow freed slaves in Egypt, we need to band together to defeat these plagues. And if we cannot defeat them right away, we must at the very least face them together.

And YET, we actually have to strike a difficult balance. It is true, We need to be like the prophets, with our eyes wide open and our hearts ready to tackle the truth of our situation. But what I also think is SO powerful about the teachings of Dr. King is his refusal to despair. So often today, I read articles and talk to people who say the situation is hopeless. Racism is too ingrained in us. Hate is too powerful, corruption too widespread, and the people too disheartened. But Dr. King never said it was hopeless. Could we really ever claim that our situation and our plagues are WORSE than what Dr. King faced in his day? He saw it all, but maintained his hope. We need that same attitude - to see the honesty of our situation, but never allow ourselves to lose hope.

I was listening to a fascinating interview recently with Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Obama. She was asked about a famous quote by Dr. King, and a recent rebuttal, written by the incredible writer, Ta-nehisi Coates. Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” And in his book, Between the World and Me, Coates retorted, “the arc of history bends towards chaos.”

And when she was asked about this, Valerie Jarrett said Coates wasn’t necessarily wrong, but that she refused to see the world that way. She refused to accept that the lesson of history is everything turns towards chaos. Like Dr. King, Jarrett said she insisted on staying positive. Not because she was ignoring the problems in our world, but because she maintained faith that we are moving in the right direction, and things ARE getting better.

Once again, it is the balancing act that we must do. Honest, yet hopeful. President Obama, in fact, expresses this same sentiment in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," where he writes: "To think clearly about race, then, requires us to see the world on a split screen... to maintain in our sights the kind of America that we want while looking squarely at America as it is, to acknowledge the sins of the past and the challenges of the present without becoming trapped in cynicism or despair.”

And so, today, on Martin Luther King Day, I must turn to all of you, and ask if this is something you can do. Can you maintain this split-screen with me? Can we talk about systemic racism and gun violence and the problems that plague our society, but all while refusing to become bitter, jaded, or so cynical that nothing changes? Can we come to the table and speak honestly, holding up mirrors to one another, and challenging each other to be our best selves, to form new relationships and bonds across our various divides, to heal our country and our world together?

I am not saying this to you because it's easy. It isn't easy for me as a white, Jewish, male, straight, (let's face it) privileged person to speak about oppression and invoke the name of Martin Luther King as if I've lived ANY of the hardship he endured. Or to represent a congregation, Ohev Shalom, that is "of Chester," but moved away half a century ago, and hasn't always maintained relationships in the community the way it could have, or should have, done all along. This isn't easy.

But I share all of this with you today, because of my ancient ancestors, the Israelites, who marched out of Egypt arm-in-arm with a mixed multitude of freed slaves. I stand here proudly, because of my rabbinic role model, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King. My history reminds me that we cannot do this alone. We all need one another. We all share an "inescapable network of mutuality." Every year, on this day, we should recommit to the work of battling oppression and speaking out against injustice, AND defiantly refuse to lose hope that someday we will win. 

I urge ALL of us to do just that. To keep a clear eye and vigilant focus on the chaos that swirls around us. However, we cannot allow ourselves to be crushed by it. It may push us, it may bend us… and we SHOULD bend. But when we do, let us bend toward justice.

Thank you.