‘Selma”
King and Rabbi Jan17 2015
We are in our Torah reading, in the
portion of Vaera, in the midst of the account of the plagues that preceded the
Exodus. It is very fitting then, that these chapters of the Exodus coincide
with Martin Luther King Day.
With all the horror of the past
weeks in France, we take time this weekend, here in the US, to recall the
message of reconciliation and brotherhood that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr not only preached but also practiced at the cost of
his life.
I want to reflect on those days, as
the movie “ Selma” has now been released, to great acclaim. The daughter of one
of our members herself worked on the costumes for the film.
It led me to recall the events in my
own memory. When I was in 4th and 5th grade, I lived in a
small Ohio town. I went to public school as the son of the local Rabbi and the
only Jewish child in the class. My counterpart in class was a black girl, or,
as was common phrased in those years, either Negro or colored, and it was quite
appropriate, the two top students in the class were one Jewish, one black.
This was, in the late 50’s, the
start of the civil rights struggle, and I recall my father explaining to me
that the signs in the south” No Coloreds Allowed” reminded him of what he saw
in Nazi Germany. We could feel, though, that things were shifting for the
better. When I was in high school, this time, in a small town in West Virginia,
just about the time of the Selma march, a black girl in our high school wanted
to be a cheerleader and the principal objected. The student body overwhelmingly
overrode his objection. Keep in mind that this was the same West Virginia in
which a local politician started out as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and then
became the most powerful figure in the Senate, and liberal Democrat to boot,
Robert Byrd.
I want to address one issue that has
been brought up about the movie, though, on the pages of Forward by Leida Snow:
(http://m.forward.com/articles/212000/selma-distorts-history-by-airbrushing-out-jewish-c), January 5, 2015 'Selma' Distorts History by
Airbrushing Out Jewish Contributions to Civil Rights)
“I looked
in vain for the embrace of a man with a yarmulke, a scene that would reflect the historical moment when Dr. King marched
with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a leading
Jewish theologian and philosopher widely respected beyond the Jewish community. He may be present in the grainy
documentary footage at the end of the film,
but he is not visible in the body of the film, nor are any other Jews openly recognized.”
 |
| Front line on the March at Selma |
I don’t want to act as critic
without having seen the movie, but I do want to fill in at least this one gap,
and highlight the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on race and the
teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King on behalf of Israel and Soviet Jews.
Rabbi Heschel and my father were in Rabbinical School at the same time, at
the “ Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft
des Judentums” in the 30’s in Nazi Berlin. Both were eventually arrested, my
father sent to prison for two years, then expelled to Vienna and points east,
Heschel sent to Poland and then points west. Years later, when I went to rabbinical school
at the Jewish Theological Seminary I was fortunate to become student assistant
to Rabbi Heschel. I handled some correspondence with the Vatican and with the
head of a major Christian Zionist Movement (Makuya) in Japan and helped type
some pages for a manuscript on the Kotzker Rebbe which later became the book, A
Passion for Truth. I organized an Israel Independence celebration for which
I had him as the keynote speaker and his words on the significance of Israel
shortly were incorporated in his book, Israel: An Echo of Eternity.
 |
| Page that I typed for the Kotzker book |
Rabbi
Heschel, to back track a little, was the scion of a Hasidic dynasty who had
attempted to merge the boundaries between the modern secular world and the
world of Hasidism. He felt himself compelled, from his perspective and personal
experience, to join in the front ranks of those calling society to task for its
failings.
The
Rabbi Against Racism
This
is an excerpt of one of his talks, on race in America, 2 years before the Selma
march at a conference on “Religion and Race”, appropriate for our Torah reading
of today, just 41 years ago to this Shabbat :
RABBI ABRAHAM JOSHUA
HESCHEL, “RELIGION AND RACE” (14 JANUARY 1963))
“At
the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the
Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go that
they may celebrate a feast to Me.” While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord,
that I should heed this voice
and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go.”
The
outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far
from having been completed. In fact, it was easier
for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross
certain university campuses.”
. . .
“Religion
and race. How can the two be uttered together? To act in the spirit of religion
is to unite what lies apart, to remember
that humanity as a whole is God’s beloved child. To act in the spirit of race is to sunder, to slash, to
dismember the flesh of living humanity.
Is this the way to honor a father: to torture his child? How can we hear the word “race” and feel no self -reproach?”
. . . Racism is satanism, unmitigated evil.
In
several ways man is set apart from all beings created in six days. The Bible
does not say, God created the plant or
the animal; it says, God created different kinds of plants, different kinds of animals (Genesis 1:
11 12, 21-25). In striking contrast, it does not say, God created different kinds of man, men of different colors
and races; it proclaims, God created
one single man. From one single man all men are descended.
In the words of the prophet Amos (5:24):
Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
If the
last line sounds familiar, it is because Dr. Martin Luther King Jr used that
same line in his famous “ I have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Monument and it
is the verse inscribed on his tombstone. It is not taken from any official
English translation of the Bible but directly from the translation as written
by Rabbi Heschel! ( per Susannah Heschel ,his daughter).
The
Reverend on Jews and Israel
The
greatness of Dr. King lay in the fact that, while he was a true advocate for
the Negro or black, he was equally an advocate for humanity, and as a result,
spoke out openly on issues that pained the Jewish community. For example, he
took up the cause of the Jews of the Soviet Union, who suffered tremendous
oppression and denial of rights under the Communist regime of the old Soviet
Union. Many of you here lived through that period:
This is from his 1966 Address to the
American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, long before it became the cause of
the larger Jewish community:
“While
Jews in Russia may not be physically murdered, as they were in Nazi Germany, they are facing everyday a kind of spiritual
and cultural genocide. The absence of opportunity
to associate as Jews in the enjoyment of Jewish culture and religious experience becomes a severe limitation upon
the individual. These deprivations are a part
of a person's emotional and intellectual life. They determine whether he is
fulfilled as a human being.
Blacks as well understand and sympathize with this problem. When you are written out of history, as a people, when
you are given no choice but to accept the majority
culture, you are denied an aspect of your own identity. Ultimately you suffer a
corrosion of your self-understanding and
your self-respect”.
Even
though Dr. King opposed the war in Vietnam, he had no illusions about the “
Worker’s Paradise”. You can also see how appropriately, he weaved the plight of
the Jew with the plight of the Black.
On
Zionism
Recall
that the United Nations, in 1975, declared that Zionism is a form of racism.
This was a resolution backed by the very Soviet Union, which Dr. King had
denounced for its oppression of Jews. Here is what Dr. King had to say on
Zionism in a public presentation, at a dinner in Cambridge , Mass. His words
have been misquoted, so for the record, I am copying the correct text:
“ At
that dinner, he rebuked a student who made an anti-Zionist remark,
saying, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking
anti-Semitism.” (See, e.g., “The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews and
Israel” by Seymour Martin Lipset; Encounter magazine, December
1969, p. 24.)
On
Israel
Finally, there are those who would deny his position
towards Israel and try to associate Dr. King with the leftist position calling
for the elimination of the Zionist colonialist entity of Israel. I know
otherwise. When I was still a student, I sat only a few feet from Dr. King, as
he spoke to a gathering of Rabbis, in 1968, on March 25, 1968, just ten days
before his assassination. He was introduced by Rabbi Heschel, whom he
effusively praised:
“It is also a wonderful experience to
be here on the occasion of the sixtieth birthday
of a man that I consider one of the truly great men of our day and age, Rabbi Heschel. He is indeed a truly great
prophet.. . . I remember marching from Selma
to Montgomery, how he stood at my side and with us as we faced that crisis situation. So I am happy to be with
him, and I want to say Happy Birthday, and I hope
I can be here to celebrate your one hundredth birthday.”
This was his statement on Israel. Note
that this was two years after the Six-Day War, and Dr. King was a pacifist. He
took flak from his supporters for recognizing that military force could be
justified.
“I think it is necessary to say that what is
basic and what is needed in the Middle East
is peace. Peace for Israel is one thing. Peace for the Arab side of that world
is another thing. Peace for Israel means
security, and we must stand with all of our might
to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and
never mind saying it, as one
of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how
desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis
of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”
He
then continued:
“On the other hand, we must see what
peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of
security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need.
These nations, as you know, are part of that third
world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions; there
will be the endless quest to find scapegoats.
So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the
economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream
of economic security.”
This was 1968. Dr. King did not address
the issue of Palestinians as an isolated issue, but as part of the overall
malaise of the Arab world. That has not been resolved.
Tragically, we know now, that,
comparable to the Marshall Plan, billions, billions, has been sent by the West,
to help the refugees. Billions, billions has been siphoned out of the pockets
of the West in over-priced oil in one of the greatest money-transfers in
history, billions that supported a vison that was to Dr. King’s vison, as night
is to day.
We can only pray, in the aftermath of
the horrors that have occurred in Paris as well as the horrors that have
occurred in Nigeria, where Boko Haram massacred 2000 Christian last week and in
Pakistan where the Taliban massacred 140 children, we can only pray that in the
Moslem world, there can arise a visionary as fearless as Dr. King to preach an
Islam for today as bravely as Dr. King preached Christianity for today.
Perhaps yet we will see a day in which
the Pope, the grand imam of Mecca, the Ayatollah of Iran, and Chief Rabbi of
Israel, and let’s throw in the Dalai Lama and Hindu and everyone else to boot,will
sit together as in the vision of Micah, the Prophet:
Many
nations shall come, and say,
“Come,
let us climb the LORD’s mountain, to the house of the God
of Jacob,
That he
may instruct us in his ways, that we may walk in his paths.”
. . .
They
shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and
their spears into pruning hooks;
One
nation shall not raise the sword against another,
nor
shall they train for war again.
They
shall all sit under their own vines,
under
their own fig trees, undisturbed;
for the
LORD of hosts
has spoken.
Though
all the peoples walk,
each in
the name of its god,
We will
walk in the name of the LORD,
our
God, forever and ever.( Ch 4)
Amen