This latter rebellion, said Rav Kook, is not the fault of the sinner, but of the community, which has failed to adequately model the ways in which Torah is in fact the ideal path to such spiritual elevation and ethical refinement.
The next morning the police decided to release us and said they would bus us back to Brown’s Chapel. I indicated to someone that I would walk rather than ride on Shabbat. Word rapidly spread through the group that there was a rabbi present who could not ride, and without vote or deliberation the entire group insisted that they would walk with me.
To the dismay of the police, over three hundred people walked back from the prison to the safety of the black neighborhood, accompanied by a phalanx of empty buses and police cars.
It was an exhilarating moment of mutual respect, achieved through engagement in a common struggle to affirm the shared human dignity of every person.
By the time I got back to Berkeley a few days later, I had experienced a new understanding, additional layers of meaning, in the Torah’s narrative of the three stories about Moshe.
In the first story Moshe shows he understands that sometimes one must be ready to combat evil even with the use of force. The State of Israel has brought renewed awareness of this lesson to the Jewish people.
The second story reminds us that not all evil is the same, that sometimes force is not called for, but we need to raise our voices against those who create unwarranted conflict and divisiveness. Indeed, sometimes tochacha, verbal chastisement, is sufficient to enable the restoration of peace within a community.
In the third story the Torah does not inform us exactly how Moshe rescued the daughters of Yitro. Did he coerce or persuade the other shepherds to allow the women to water their flock? Perhaps all he did was appear on the scene on their side. Sometimes the greatest chesed and the greatest justice can be achieved simply through supportive presence.
I don’t deceive myself into thinking I made a significant contribution to the civil rights struggle. But I take pride in havin, like Moshe, lent my Jewish supportive presence to the continuous battle for human dignity in the world.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 struck a blow against the black-Jewish coalition in America. By the early 1970’s that rich collaborative relationship had disintegrated to the detriment of blacks, of Jews, of American society and of the battle for human dignity in the world.
The life and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. are truly worth remembering, and a day in his honor is worth commemorating in our schools, in our shuls and in our homes.
