Our service also included readings presented by Daniel Solomon, Bobbi and David Fishback, Gaby Ross, Eva Sezchenyl, and Ian DeWaal. Rabbi Adam Rosenwasser and Cantor Lindsay Kanter officiated.
Readings for the
Temple Emanuel Martin Luther King, Jr. Shabbat Service, January 17, 2025
READING ONE
Here at Temple Emanuel,
we display with pride the iconic photograph of Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel at the Selma March which led to the enactment of the historic
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Rabbi Heschel was Dr. King’s great ally and a
scholar of the Jewish Prophetic Tradition, and he reminded us that the “prophet
was an individual who said ‘No’ to his society, condemning its
habits and assumptions, its complacency. The purpose of
prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well
as to revolutionize history."
READING TWO
In the spirit of Dr.
King and Rabbi Heschel, this evening is a time to recommit ourselves to the
work against the related challenges of white supremacy and anti-semitism, while
also remembering that we need to strengthen our bonds with those who share our
values. While this particular moment is fraught with legitimate concerns
that the American Experiment is at great risk, we must, like Dr. King, strive
to make it work.
READING THREE
Dr. King’s vision
was rooted in a faith that right would prevail: "The arc of the
moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
But he also knew that only
through the work of our own hands would the world become a better
place:
"Human progress is
neither automatic nor inevitable. . . . No social advance rolls in on the
wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts and persistent
work of dedicated individuals, who are willing to be co-workers with God."
This evening, we give
thanks to all those who engage in that “tireless effort and persistent
work.”
READING FOUR
Dr. King explained that "We are simply seeking to bring into full
realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege
and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where [people] no longer
argue that the color of a [person’s] skin determines the content of [their]
character; the dream of a land where every[one] will respect the dignity and
worth of human personality -- this is the dream.”
“When it is realized, the
jangling discords of our nation will be transformed into a beautiful symphony”
and everyone “will know that America is truly the land of the free and the home
of the brave."
We also remember that the journey to
this Land of Promise is far from finished, and that there are powerful forces
seeking, consciously or inadvertently, to take us back to a time when we were
much farther away from this Land of Promise.
READING FIVE
The tragic events of the last year and
a half remind us that this is not just a challenge in America, but also
world-wide. In his last book, published in 1967, Dr.
King described our world as a “Great World House in which we have to
live together -- black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew,
Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu -- a family unduly separated in
ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn
somehow to live with each other in peace.
Pulitzer Prize winning
author Isabel Wilkerson, in her book Caste, provides a take on this
metaphor, which takes us deeper into the problems posed by us all living
in this house.
“We in the developed
world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is
beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and
contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waived away
for decades, centuries even.
READING SIX
“Many people may rightly
say, ‘I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do
with the sins of the past. . . . And, yes. Not one of us was
here when this house was built. . . . But here we are, the current occupants of
a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the
foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We
did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, BUT THEY ARE OURS TO DEAL WITH
NOW.”
The human race’s ability
to deal with this broken house is the existential challenge of the 21st Century
– not just in America, but in the entire world. We can only repair this
house if we face up to its defects.
Dr. King challenged us to do so, and
to do so with a moral clarity rooted in our shared religious values.
READING SEVEN
Just days before his assassination in
1968, just two months before the Poor People’s Campaign March on Washington,
Dr. King, in a sermon just a few miles from where we sit tonight, proclaimed, “I
will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope. . . . God grant that we will be that David of truth
set out against the Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath
of refusing to deal with the problems, and go on with the determination to
make America the truly great America that it is called to be.”
CONGREGATION:
Let us learn in order to teach.
Let us learn in order to do.
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