We thank Kathleen Blumenthal for her inspiring report on the recent URJ Bienniel and for her contribution of a copy of the new Women's Commentary on the Torah to our Temple library. We look forward to reading and using it for many years to come.

This weekend was also the annual commemoration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so I felt constrained to say a few words to frame our thoughts about Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement. It's a bit less than a sermon, but I think it may serve as a fitting memorial. See if you agree.

The Mountaintop

January 18, 2008
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

On January 30, 1956, a bomb was thrown onto the porch of a home in Montgomery, Alabama. There were two people in the house. Fortunately, no one was injured. On January 27, 1957, on the same front porch an unexploded bomb was discovered and removed. On February 18, 1957, the owner of that home was featured for the first time on the cover of Time Magazine. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr. He was no stranger to conflict. He put himself in the midst of it. The first major conflict that thrust him to leadership occurred on December 1, 1955, when Mrs. Rosa Parks, a forty-two year old Montgomery seamstress, refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white man and was arrested. In 1958, King told the story of the years of conflict in Montgomery in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom.

He was in New York, signing copies of the book when a black woman stepped up to him and asked, "Are you Martin Luther King?" He felt something enter his chest. He had been stabbed by a mentally deranged woman.

Ten tumultuous years later -- as the struggle for civil rights for American blacks rose to a crescendo and the war in Viet Nam reached its absolute height -- in what became his final speech, Martin Luther King referred to that incident:

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out ... to read some of the mail that came in... [including a] letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. ... While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."

King went on to say that he was also happy that he had not sneezed, that he was alive to witness the years from 1960 to 1968 as the Civil Rights Movement gained ground. The morning of his last speech he came down by plane from Atlanta and the plane was delayed while every piece of luggage was checked and double-checked because he was aboard. And when they arrived in Memphis, they told him about threats on his life. But he paid no attention to threats. He closed his speech by saying:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. 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!

Martin Luther King was assassinated the next day, April 4, 1968. The struggle for Civil Rights went on without him, without his peaceful voice and his patient optimism. Violence increased and the struggle split apart the early Civil Rights movement. Blacks determined to go it on their own, without the help and support of other minorities; and especially without the help and support of the Jews who had been so strong in working for Civil Rights in its early days.

But Martin Luther King Day was established, so that once a year we can turn and examine ourselves. It would be a great mistake to think that the Civil Rights movement is exclusively for the benefit of the rights of blacks. The mountaintop is the same for all of us, freedom and equality for one group can only be assured when freedom and equality are assured for all groups.

America is the greatest nation on the earth, and nevertheless it is a flawed nation, with a flawed government, with a tendency to forget its highest values, and a tendency to tread on its own weakest people. There is war again, even as there was war when Martin Luther King made his final speech. And now, as then, as we concentrate on injustices and immoralities that threaten us from abroad, we tend to let slide injustices and immoralities that threaten us from within. As our children bleed and die in foreign lands, we tend to forget the plight of those bleeding and dying here in our own land. But make no mistake, there are still injustices that cry out to us for redress. No one can preach this year, this season, this moment, on Martin Luther King's weekend, without quoting the words of the prophet Amos, as King quoted them in his final speech, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." And let us say, Amen.