Feb. 22, 2018 - Brother Nathanael
04:33
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| Time | Text |
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| Growing up Jewish in the 50s meant growing up with the civil rights movement. | |
| Jews were aggressive activists in those days and no Jewish home or synagogue stood aloof from the cause of civil rights. | |
| When I was five years old, Martin Luther King, the leader of the movement, appeared on the cover of Time magazine. | |
| And there he was again when I was six in the legendary Montgomery Bus Boycott. | |
| It was acknowledged in Jewry that King's prime supporters were prominent Jews, like Stanley Levison, a known communist, William Kahn, from Pittsburgh like me, and rabbis Abraham Heschel and Maurice Eisendrath. | |
| Jews had a strong social conscience in those days, and if there was a cause to be fought against injustice, Jews were right smack in the middle of it. | |
| The darling of that social consciousness was David Susskind, whom my father watched religiously. | |
| There have been very few intermarriages, but it's such a basic psychological fear | |
| that it seems to me that someone should acquaint the white community with the fact that the Negro community has as | |
| much pride of race as Catholics have pride of religion or Jews have pride of religion. | |
| that no matter what the degree of integration, isn't it likely That it would always be the exception that would result in an intermarriage. | |
| I think when America rises to its full maturity, this will not be a basic issue that is constantly brought up and constantly mentioned as we hear it today all over the country in general and the South in particular. | |
| And I've also said that even after making these These general statements, as I said in my book, Stride Toward Freedom, in the final analysis, the Negro's basic aim is to be the white man's brother and not his brother-in-law. | |
| There was one such brother-in-law in our community whose children, which I liked very much, had frizzy hair, a dark complexion, albeit with added Jewish features. | |
| The family, especially the Jewish mother, suffered as a pariah of sorts. | |
| My observation was that although Jews fought against segregation and supported full integration publicly, privately was considered a disgrace for a Jew in our circles to live in a black neighborhood. | |
| But this is not the main issue. | |
| For as Dr. King put it, with my nuance, if Jewry should ever rise to its full maturity, it will fight against all injustices, including the plight of the Palestinian people. | |
| I don't see rabbis and prominent Jews marching hand in hand with Palestinians for equal rights in the so-called Jewish state. | |
| And I don't see any Jewish social conscience rising up against Israel's brutal military occupation. | |
| Which brings me to my theme, the killing of Martin Luther King. | |
| Many people can remember the instant they heard, where they were, what they were doing, The sense of the world shifting on its axis. | |
| And they think they know what happened. | |
| Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight. | |
| Never again. | |
| Bye! | |
| Riots exploded that night across America, and I myself was in Pittsburgh Hill District watching store windows break and blacks riding up and down Center Avenue. | |
| Fifty years later, I asked myself, did Martin Luther King leave an abiding legacy as a guiding light? |
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