Later that night the rabbis in the group were asked to come out of the pen in which we were being held. A group of Jews who lived in Selma wanted to meet with all of us, but in particular they wanted to speak with one of the Reform rabbis, the director of the Hillel Foundation at the University of California at Berkeley, Rabbi Abraham Gumbiner (yes, he bore the name – and was in fact a direct descendant – of the Magen Avraham.) In his first position out of rabbinical school, some thirty years earlier, Rabbi Gumbiner had served as spiritual leader of the small Reform temple in Selma, Alabama.
The delegation from the local Jewish community demanded that we pack up and leave Selma as soon as possible. They described how the presence of Northern Jewish agitators, particularly rabbis, was promoting hatred of local Jews and making their economic and social lives very difficult to sustain.
We reminded them that it was only twenty years after the Holocaust and that we as Jews had condemned the European non-Jewish population whose silence in the face of Nazi persecution had made the extermination of six million Jews possible.
Were we then as a people to hypocritically enact that same silence in the face of injustice toward others? Would we not, through such inaction, be retroactively justifying the self-interest of the pope and of Protestant religious leaders whose concern for the economic and social security of their parishioners led them to silence and even to collaboration?
The meeting was tense and painful. We did not view their situation lightly, and attempted to explore with them how the broader Jewish community might be helpful. They said they would get us out of jail immediately if we agreed to leave town.
We declined, but could not persuade them of the justice of our position. Our parting was filled with hugs and anger. Early the next day we were released on our own recognizance.
On Friday an even larger group, numbering close to three hundred, attempted again to march to the home of the mayor of Selma. The entire group was arrested and transported to the prison yard, since there was not enough room inside for all of us. We were kept standing in rows with no water and no bathroom facilities for many hours until, at evening, we were brouht to a large hall.
As Shabbat began the rabbis in the group began to lead an explanatory service followed by the singing of zemirot. Large numbers of young people slowly came forward to identify themselves as Jews and to participate in the service and the singing. There was a palpable sense of Jewish pride as it became clear how many of the civil rights activists present were Jews, albeit most of them were not generally so identified.
At that moment I was reminded of a teaching I had heard in the name of Rabbi Abraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook, the first chief rabbi of Palestine in the mandate period.
Rav Kook said that there are two different forms of rebellion against Torah. There is chutzpah tata’ah, lower rebellion, which is expressed in a person’s refusal to yield to the material constraints demanded by Torah. Such a person violates the law for the sake of his or her personal pleasure and gratification and ought properly to bear the consequences of his or her sins.
There is, on the other hand, chutzpah ila’ah, higher rebellion, which is expressed in the abandonment of Torah by a person who is seeking spiritual elevation and ethical refinement but fails to find those qualities in Orthodoxy.
