The need for blacks and Jews to continue working together for justice in the United States and abroad was stressed this week as the Israeli Embassy marked the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Despite the scars and tension, the strong and abiding foundation of our relationship continues,” declared Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
“We know that if America cannot make room for blacks, it will not have room for Jews,” he said.
Saperstein spoke Tuesday as he and Dr. Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Black Women, received the 1992 Civil Rights Award from the Jewish National Fund for their years of work for civil rights.
This is the eighth year the Israeli Embassy and the JNF have held the ceremony commemorating the slain civil rights leader. The program was postponed from January, when King’s birthday is normally marked, because at the time Israeli Ambassador Zalman Shoval and other members of the embassy were engaged in the bilateral Middle East peace talks.
Saperstein spoke of the close working relationship between Jewish and black members of Congress and between Jewish and black organizations in Washington on issues close to their communities.
Height said that by working together “we have achieved a great deal.”
But she warned that the “clear effort to do away with bigotry” that existed in the 1960s “is not here now.” She called for a return to this struggle.
King’s “legacy and message continue to resonate in our hearts,” Shoval said. He said that in Israel, which has had to fight five wars, “Dr. King’s message of non-violence speaks to our deepest sorrow about the past and our fondest hopes for the future.”
The ambassador said it was fitting that King was memorialized by a 10,000-tree JNF forest in Israel because he was a supporter of the Jewish state and saw anti-Zionism as a code name for anti-Semitism.
He expressed sorrow that King had not lived to see the beginning of freedom for South Africa’s blacks and the homecoming to Israel of thousands of Jews from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia.
Shoval also used the occasion to urge Iran and Shi’ite groups in Lebanon to release Ron Arad, the Israeli air force navigator believed to be held in Lebanon since 1986. Arad’s wife, Tami, who was in Washington seeking help from the Bush administration, was in the audience.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
