January 16, 2007

Happy birthday, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Subject: Martin Luther King Day
Date: January 15, 2007 11:26:53 PM IST

Hi Tamar,

Today is Martin Luther King Day. I led a bike ride (pic attached) to Dr. King's tomb [in Atlanta, Georgia]; it was the 5th year we have done it. I even read the following King quotes.

I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart. ... I knew I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

More later. Got to go feed the goats before it rains. Love, Neil


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tamar,
Something I found on NPR website:
"In 1965, a Rabbi named Max Nussbaum asked Martin Luther King Jr. to address his congregation at the Temple Israel in Hollywood....
"King accepted Nussbaum's invitation, and his sermon was recorded onto an old-fashioned, reel-to-reel audiotape. The tape was then forgotten, lost in a pile of the rabbi's other audiotapes and papers."
If you want to listen to it, you can find it on
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6843464

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

For the last time, this time divided into 2 parts:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?
storyId=6843464

Tamar Orvell said...

Because you mentioned a rabbi's partnership with Dr. King, I also want to name here Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who, when he marched with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery, explained to his detractors, "My legs were praying." Heschel, also born this month, would have been 100 years old this year.

Thank you, anonymous Shimon, for your wide-ranging interests and concerns, and for uncovering wonderful resources, often shedding light in dark places. I am now listening to Dr. King's sermon at Temple Israel (1965) — a timeless message on the great struggle to ensure universal freedom and human dignity, intoned in his celebrated cadenced spoken words.