Mid-January offers us the opportunity to reflect on three visionary leaders, whose lives made manifest the Divine power of transformation to change the world. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is marked this year by our nation on Monday, January 16th; Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s yahrzeit is on the 18th of Tevet (January 13 this year); and in the same week, we begin our annual reading of the Book of Exodus, which tells the story of Moses’ birth and awakening to the Divine call to justice and liberation.
It is fitting, then, that on Monday, January 16, Temple Beth Israel will join Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries (CMM) and Brandeis University in the 2nd Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Interfaith Service. This day expresses Dr. King’s vision of a more equal, just, and peaceful world through interfaith community service.
King and Heschel were spiritual descendants of the prophet Moses, and each drew deeply from their own religious traditions to inspire the nation to take part in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality. Heschel (1907-1972) was a Warsaw-born refugee from Nazi Germany, who became an American rabbi, theologian, activist, and writer. King and Heschel were close friends and walked arm-in-arm in Selma in pursuit of their dream of a just society.
Heschel viewed King as a modern-day prophet who, like Moses, was leading his people to freedom. And King said of Heschel: “I feel that Rabbi Heschel is one of the persons who is relevant at all times, always standing with prophetic insights to guide us through these difficult days” (March 25, 1968, Keynote Address of Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Rabbis).
Beyond their mutual friendship, each was influenced by the teachings of other religious traditions in both their thought and activism and believed that when people of faith come together, they could change the world. In his last book, King wrote: “The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools” (In Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967, p. 171).
In his essay, “No Religion is an Island,” Heschel wrote, “The world is too small for anything but mutual care and deep respect; the world is too great for anything but responsibility for one another” (In Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, by Abraham Joshua Heschel and Susannah Heschel, p. 299)
The day before he was assassinated, King evoked the image of Moses in his speech that we know as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”: “I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” King reminded us that Moses never reached the Promised Land but led his people to a place where they would be able to continue their great journey on their own. And once Moses was no longer there to lead the people, it was up to the people themselves to make that dream a reality.
As I write these words in the final weeks of the year 2011, I just learned that Time Magazine has named “The Protester” as “Person of the Year.” Rather than one person, these are ordinary people who brought the world the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Perhaps even as we gear up for the Presidential Election, we will remember that ultimately, the story of the Jewish people and humanity’s path to a world grounded in justice, equality, and love is not only about the leader but about people who stand up and take steps to make their vision a reality.
What King, Heschel, Moses, and the Torah teach us is that if we dream and act on those dreams, if we continue to hope and aspire to a world that is more decent than the world we know today, and if we join together with our neighbors, we can change the world.