“And Moses said to the people, remember this day, on which you went free from Egypt, the house of bondage, how the Lord freed you from it with a mighty hand.” (Exo. 13:3)
This Shabbat Jews the world over read the final chapter in the slavery of the ancient Israelites in Egypt. During this same weekend we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, the modern-day Moses whose non-violent methods pried open the gates of bondage for African Americans. These concurrent events culminate in the 2nd inauguration of the first black President of the United States.
As Jews, our liturgy reminds us on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis that we were slaves, oppressed, and at the mercy of a nation who refused to recognize our basic human rights. Having shed the chains of servitude, we became responsible for reaching out to those still imprisoned and enslaved by the wanton hatred of racism.
In August 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, Martin Luther King declared, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal.” Two years later, in March 1965, Abraham Joshua Heschel, a renowned Jewish theologian, marched arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. In recounting this momentous event, Professor Heschel famously said, “When I marched in Selma, my legs were praying.” Heschel reminded Jews of their eternal commitment to freedom for all peoples.
Abraham Joshua Heschel first met Reverend King at a conference on “Religion and Race” sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews held in Chicago in January 1963. In his opening speech to the conference, Heschel said, “At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses…. The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.”
So much has happened. As a nation, we have come so far. As a civilization, our journey has barely begun. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring an end to the slavery of African Americans. A hundred years later, in 1963, Martin Luther King declared his dream of the day that proclamation would finally be realized. On Monday, January 21, 2013, Barack Obama, a black American, will take the oath of office as President of the United States. He will take this oath on two bibles-one is the bible on which Lincoln took his oath of office in 1861 and the other is the bible Martin Luther King meditated and prayed with.
The first words of this writing belonged to the ancient Moses. The last words belong to Martin Luther King, the modern-day Moses:
“When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Rabbi Howard Siegel