Despite the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. Federal holiday marking the birth date of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had nothing to do with Judaism, I believe all Jews should celebrate this holiday. Rev. King, who was assassinated in 1968, served as the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law.
In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he said he believed that "now is the time” (1963) for racial injustice to end. He did, indeed, have a dream, one that I think extends to religious freedom as well. And we can all learn something about nonviolent activism, which is still necessary today when it comes to religious equality. And despite what some might think, religious inequality is alive and well in the world.
Just as Rev. King fought for racial equality, which continues to some extent to be an issue in some areas of the country and the world, Jews fight for religious equality in some areas of the nation and the world. We may not have to do so overtly in all cases, but we do have to do so...such as when children are asked to take tests at school on the High Holy Days or when Nazi flags are hung in windows or when synagogues are defaced. We have to do so when Israel, the Jewish nation, is attacked and when others tell us Jews should have no homeland.
Jews have had a dream of a homeland--Israel. They have had a dream of freedom of religious speech and expression. They have had a dream that one day anti-Semitism would no longer exist. They continue to hold these dreams dear--the ones that have come true and the ones that have not.
As Rev. King said, we--Jews--cannot be satisfied, not as long as Jews anywhere in the world are persecuted and as long as the Jewish homeland remains at war, attacked from all sides by those who would prefer that it did not exist at all.
Like Rev. King, we must have a dream...today. We must have a dream that we can create religious equality in whatever form we see that taking. We must have a dream that one day Israel will be free to exist in peace. We have to have a dream that in the future Jews all over the world will be accepted and welcomed into the communities where they choose to live.
I have a dream that we do, indeed, hold this truth to be self evident--that all men and women--Jew and non-Jew alike--are created equal and that all men and women--Jew and non-Jew alike--have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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