Last Saturday, in Synagogues around the world, the weekly section read from the Five Books of Moses, the Torah, was entitled Vayachi, literally “and he lived.” It is the reading that ends the Book of Genesis, and the entirety of the lives of the Jewish patriarchs. While Jewish commentaries typically focus on Jacob’s death in this portion, it also records for us the death of Joseph, all of his brothers, and in fact that whole generation. In doing so, it sets the stage for what was to follow. A fall from power and importance. A degradation of spirit to be suffered for 400 years, as the Children of Israel were so simply and easily turned into slaves, as Pharaoh uttered the words, “Let us deal wisely with them.” Yet, there is a redemption back into freedom which is celebrated on every Jewish Sabbath, as wine is to be sipped with joy.

For a moment though, I want to bring us back to the opening words: And he lived. Think about what those words connote when applied to Jacob, or anyone else. He lived, so we can say he passed time. Or, he lived, therefore we know that he died. Or we can take the verb as what it is, an active entity, directed to life. He lived. He took advantage of every moment, of every adventure, of every opportunity that life had to offer. He Lived. These words then can be a wonderful, gloriously affirming epitaph: He lived.

In the case of Jacob, he was exiled from home by a brother who have killed him; he returns with wealth. With two wives and two concubines and 12 children. He loses a son, Joseph, only to miraculously regain him and reunite with him in exile. And although the Tradition tells us that he knew the enslavement of his descendants would follow, he did not have to see it in this life.

Today, we honor with a holiday the memory of another person about whom we can say in the highest sense, “he lived.” He too saw denigration and elevation, and he saw in his life the aftermath of slavery. He saw the results, once again, when some who are in power deny the existence of the Divine Image implanted in every human being. Today we gather to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We honor his life and his memory because he was willing to speak out and to suffer for the vision of a world containing justice and freedom for all its citizens.

I believe that Dr. King could see in the Holocaust of World War II, the horrifying result of what we refer to in Hebrew as sinat chinam, the unwarranted hatred of one human being for another. Therefore he knew where such hatred leads. All people of conscience, in the era of the civil rights movement, were galvanized by the unthinking, unfathomable injustice that was playing out in the disenfranchisement from society of a group of people simply because their skin is a different color.

While I grew up in an era when a Jew might be denied entrance to a golf club, or a particular university, or medical school just because of the religion he or she might have been born to, there were African-American citizens in this country who were denied the right to vote. I was never stopped by a police patrol while driving through a given neighborhood simply because of the color of my skin. We know that this happened, and sadly sometimes still does to those of color. Blacks were denied service in white restaurants. Or for that matter the ability to drink at any drinking fountain, only the ones designated “colored.” Did our country, this United States, have no conscience?

The late Dr. Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, studied developmental stages in children. He found that early in their development they learned not to do prohibited things in order to avoid punishment. Later as an individual properly matures, Piaget found that an individual will avoid certain actions not from fear of punishment, but because of an awareness that they are just not right. Likewise, other things will be done, even if punishment ensues, because they are the right thing to do. This is called conscience. And there are times when we need a role model to teach us what that means. Until Rosa Parks stood her ground against injustice by remaining seated, a black person might not even be able to sit on a public bus. We arrested her for this heinous act, but some 50 years ago she gave this nation a conscience. I am in awe of her because she continued to be a conscience until her death.

When we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a holiday, we are saying of him not just that he lived, but that he lived in the highest sense of those words. We are saying that he, like Rosa Parks, became a conscience of this nation, a moral compass. He urged all of us to live life with the highest of ideals, and ultimately, his life was taken from him because of that. And we have learned the terrible lesson that there will always be those who act without conscience. Those who will put self-interest, or power, or fleeting pleasure over what in their hearts they should know is right. There will always be those who are willing to denigrate others as their path to elevating themselves, even though it is a false elevation. Yet, Dr. King said, you cannot be all that you should be, until I am all that I should be, and I cannot be all that I should be until you are all that you should be. In other words, our lives as human beings are intertwined just because we are human beings. If you wonder at that, let me remind you of the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller of the German Confessing Church in Germany who survived World War II. He said: First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

As the Midrash, a body of ancient rabbinic stories, lectures and wisdom explains, one human being was created first so that no one could say to another, my lineage is better than yours. We all have the same human heritage.

Freedom though is fragile and easily lost. This day, like the story of Passover, should serve to remind us that the price of freedom lost and regained is human life. The Children of Israel are not freed from Egyptian Slavery until the tenth plague in which the first born die. The Revolutionary and Civil Wars of this country were fought, at an enormous cost of human life, for freedom. And slavery in this country did not truly end until the struggle of Dr. King led to the acceptance of the simple basic principle of "one person, one vote". That acceptance cost him his life. Can it really only be 40 years ago, a single generation, that the voting rights act was passed? Did it really take the land of the free and the home of the brave 189 years of existence to enshrine that principle in law? Sadly, yes.
Yet, I question that end to slavery. Not to diminish Dr. King’s legacy of conscience, but to celebrate it. He spoke out about the millions of dollars spent to store surplus food in this country, and told of a way to store it for free. Do not keep it in the silos and warehouses of America. Put it in the wrinkled bellies of the hungry among us. He also spoke of the need for poverty to be seen as not a problem of race, but of class.

So I have to ask, if the assassin’s bullet had not taken him away from us at the tragic age of 39, what would Dr. King have said today about the economic slavery that keeps people, if not from having dreams, from fulfilling them? As we consider minimum wage, fair wage, living wage issues again, what does conscience require of us? Can we say that justice is blind, with a clear conscience, when a disproportionate number of people of color languish in our jails and in particular on death row? What then does conscience call us to do with regard to the death penalty? When little children, pregnant women, or any of the disadvantaged in our society do not have access to proper health care, should we act to ensure that medicaid is fully funded? What does conscience say when we give tax breaks in this multi-cultural state to the upper echelons of society and do not fully fund medicaid? Does our conscience rest easily in this country of free speech, when federal money for sex education comes with a gag order, requiring us to teach nothing but abstinence? Will conscience allow us to remain silent while the IRS threatens an Episcopal church in Pasadena, California because a priest there gave an anti-war sermon before the last Presidential election? In silence there is acquiescence, if not outright approval. Conscience requires more of us than silence.

Would there have been a civil rights movement without a Rosa Parks, out of conscience, to peacefully resist injustice? Would there have been a voting rights act without non-violent civil disobedience and the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr?

It is not easy to stand up for what is right in the midst of a society set against you. Let me remind you that in January of 1956 Dr. King was arrested - arrested - for driving 30mph in a 25mph zone. That same month, his house was bombed. In 1958 while promoting his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, he was stabbed in a Harlem book store by an African-American woman. When, in January of 1965, Dr. King successfully registered to vote in Selma, Alabama, he was assaulted by James George Robinson, of Birmingham. And in spite of uniting people of faith and good conscience, we know that James Earl Ray took Dr. King’s life on April 4, 1968.

It will never be easy to speak out, to speak out of conscience rather than convenience unless we, yes we, each one of us, make it so. If we can welcome positive criticism, if we can accept rebuke when we have done wrong, or condoned it, then it will no longer be dangerous to be a conscience, and dreams will come true. The dreams you have, the dreams I have, and the dreams of those generations yet to come. Then we will say with renewed conviction of Dr. King, that he lived and his legacy and his lessons continue to live. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked in his living, and with his life, that each of us be permitted to live as what we are, an embodiment of the Divine image, with dignity, with equality, and with opportunity. In the words of Theodore Herzl, if you will it, it is no dream. It will be reality. May we all have the will, the conscience to honor Dr. King and make the dream of a just society come true. Thank you.