Every year, MLK Day is a very moving time. I am inspired to reflect on who King was and what he did to change the world. Ultimately, he gave his life for the causes of justice and equality. King did so with a full heart and with open eyes. I remember learning of his death on the evening of April 4th, 1968, and feeling devastated. It was as if something fundamental had broken in America. It was as if the world cracked open, and all I could see was a looming, dark chasm.
In that bitter trough of pain and woe, of racism and assassination and Vietnam, I wondered whether we could ever break the cycle of violence. The numbers tell a grim story: in 1968, there were 23,875 total firearm deaths. This includes suicide, police shootings, accidents, and homicides. Outrageous. Even worse, in 2018, fifty years later, the number was 39,741 total firearm deaths.
The trajectory is demoralizing—and yet MLK Day is not meant to be a time for elegiac reflection. On King’s 97th birthday, our task—our duty—is to recommit ourselves to the vision for which he lived and died.
Three years before his murder, King gave a guest sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood. His words from that day still pulse with urgency: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. As we sang tonight, We shall overcome, because Carlyle is right: ‘No lie can live forever.’ We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right: ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right: ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet, that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown stands God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.’ With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up that day.”
This message still resonates with enormous force. We don’t roll our eyes and sadly intone how naïve this message was. We don’t eschew its contents as irrelevant. Rather, we embrace the hope King expressed. In this nation where violence is so ingrained in the fabric of discourse, we cannot succumb to its twisted path into chaos. King would never condone that. Neither should we.
The song goes, “We shall overcome—someday.” It doesn’t give a time and date. It gives a directive, a horizon to aim for, to believe in. This echoes a very contemporary Jewish theology: we work to bring the Messianic age without knowing if or when it will arrive. We don’t wait passively for redemption. We never stop working to bring more peace and more justice into the world.
Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning to become president of the United States in 1968, which is why he was in Indianapolis the night MLK was murdered. He was preparing to address folks, mostly all Black, in the inner city—the ghetto—of Indianapolis. His campaign staff got the news about King’s death and begged RFK to cancel the event and get out. The Indianapolis Police were convinced there would be violence and told Kennedy they were leaving, suggesting Kennedy should do the same. He refused to go. He was the one who announced King’s death. He bravely believed he could deliver this awful news to everyone there with sensitivity and grace. Without notes, he spoke from his heart with eloquence and honesty:
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our lives, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
The words and wishes of King and Kennedy—two leaders of my generation cut down as they sought tikkun olam, the repair of the world—still resonate. In times like ours, we need to hear them not as history, but as present-tense directives. Not as distant ideals, but as daily work.
We shall overcome. Someday.
Before Shabbat 