Friends, on Friday night, our service will honor the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We will join in music and prayer as we remember the extraordinary story of Dr King. He calls out to us still to keep caring, keep fighting, keep working for a world of greater tolerance and justice. That work feels as pressing and vital as ever, as minorities are maligned, antisemitism is widespread, immigrants are demonized, trans rights are under attack and people of color are belittled. Hate breathes life on a national scale and in our communities. I am so thankful that KI remains a place of tolerance and inclusion, where we can be our best selves. From our Social Justice committee to our Inclusion committee to our LGBTQIA affinity group and beyond, we are endeavoring to make sure the rights of others – those we know and those we do not know – are lifted up and valued.

Here is some of what I intend to share at services this Shabbat:

The theme of our service is Holding onto Hope and we are holding onto hope, some of us just barely. Some of us are trying our best to hold onto hope and maybe with success, maybe not. Some of us I fear have let go of hope and we can’t blame them.

Look at the state of our world, fires on one coast, homes lost, lives devastated, all the mementos and pictures and art, all the books and belongings gone. And on this coast: freezing temperatures that sap the soul and challenge our motivation to even get out of bed.

War unfolds in the Middle East. Hostages remain in faraway tunnels. Civil unrest in Syria. The threat posed by Lebanon, Iran, Yemen. Let’s not forget all the poverty, racism, homophobia, antisemitism, all the effects of climate change, all the hate that breathes life even now, even still in 2025. We see it. We feel it. We are undone by it and pained by it all.

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, he looked out at a world of strife and prejudice; it wasn’t the same world as ours today, nor was it so drastically different. The fires he saw were the fires of great oppression. A people that had been demonized, beleaguered, lynched and cast out. In Alabama, in Mississippi, in Georgia and Louisiana, in small towns and cities, north and south, in places obvious and less obvious, the African American was deemed other. He or she was deemed different and thus scary, foreign, less than.

Some of us have stood in Birmingham or Montgomery. We looked with our own eyes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and stood with our own feet at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr King served as preacher, as his father did before him. We walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, site of bloody Sunday. We stood at the base of the Montgomery County Court House, which in 1965 marked the end of the 55-mile march to freedom as a people demanded the opportunity to vote.

These are real places, in this country, not terribly far from here, paying homage to real people. This is not distant history; it’s our history and it’s our responsibility to make sure his legacy lives in us. Let’s say it clearly: As Jews, we must care; we must do what our ancestors had the courage to do and lend our voice to building a world of more peace.

We can’t know how Dr. King felt, but we can read what he wrote. We can hear still what he said. We can study what he taught in his own time, before he was taken from this world so ruthlessly. Tonight’s service brings readings from his memorial in DC. These quotes urge us toward justice and right, no matter the administration or year, no matter the temperature outside or our energy level. The great prophets of the Jewish story urge us all these years later from apathy and indifference and in the direction of love and togetherness. 

In our Haftarah this week, Isaiah warns us not to go backward; we cannot march forward only to fall backward. Friends, if you’re feeling angry or fearful or uncertain, if your sense of hope is waning, our prophets would say to all of us, that the Jewish job is to fight onward, no matter how we feel. Moses was unsure whether he could stand before Pharaoh, God said to him, in essence, your role is to lead us, no matter how exactly you feel. We do not have the luxury of sitting back to complain or staring at Facebook. This is the time to roll up our sleeves, give to the causes that move us, join us in our advocacy, lean into community and work toward a better tomorrow.