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Prophets

Today’s Martin Luther King message is from a college classmate, George Stavis. It comes in both prose and musical versions, as he is not only admirably literate but also a superb banjo player (Jack Bowers, another college classmate accompanies on piano). George delivered this short sermon in both versions at Yom Kippur last year, but its relevance today is clear:

If there is one thing we know around here, it’s that we are a storytelling people. Or more accurately, that we have a storytelling rabbi. Why do we tell stories? Because we are asked to consider the lessons of the past in order to inform our lives now. And in great measure, this is the way of our people, from Exodus to the present.

So the rabbi has asked me, for this Yom Kippur, to reflect on our story and my story. But in telling my story at this Yom Kippur, I’ll talk about one of our revered prophets from the past, and I’ll add two prophets from our time, whom I believe will be revered in the future.

I’ll call my prophets Peter, Martin and Isaiah. Peter and Martin are, we shall say, new age, and Isaiah is old school.

Peter is my first prophet. That would be Pete Seeger. Who thinks Pete Seeger is a prophet? Well, the Harvard Crimson remembered Pete in an article titled “Pete Seeger: a Prophet in His Own Land.” And I saw Pete Seeger for the first time when I was about 8, when he was blacklisted and he played at a dinner party honoring a 90-year old progressive. I guess it was baked in at that point: banjo and politics. Pete, in his prophetic vision, taught that the world should be one in peace and freedom, and that the music of the people – the folk music – could help to show the way.

One of his records I listened to was called “With Voices Together We Sing.” He sang, in the Hammer Song, “it’s a song about love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land.” And his crowning achievement was his revision of an old, old gospel song and adapting it to the civil rights movement. His message was We Shall Overcome, which became the final words of Lyndon Johnson’s speech in presenting the Voting Rights Act to Congress. So I was raised with a vision of the power of song, the power of music, to bring people together in a progressive, admittedly optimistic, world of harmony. What has this to do with Yom Kippur? Stay with me.

No surprise that my second prophet, Martin, is Martin Luther King. Who vouches for his prophetic bona fides? A 1999 poll of 137 leading scholars of American public address found that the “I Have a Dream” speech was the most important speech of the 20th century. Notably, King referred to Isaiah in the Dream Speech when he said, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low … and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” And why is King my second prophet? My late father Morton Stavis, who was raised orthodox and became socialist, secular, and Zionist, was deeply involved with the Civil Rights movement in the 50’s, 60’s and for the rest of his life. He was Dr. King’s lawyer, and while in high school, I met King twice, once at my home. I registered voters in Birmingham, Alabama in the winter of 1964/65.

Two months later, on March 7, 1965, State troopers and local police in Selma, Alabama brutally beat unarmed marchers protesting the murder, by a trooper, of a peaceful demonstrator a few weeks earlier. This became known as Bloody Sunday, and it created the overwhelming push for Johnson’s Voting Rights Act, presented on March 16, 1965, 9 days later. Additional marches were organized, and my younger brother was there. And on March 6th of this year, my two brothers and I went to Selma for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, where my father was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Voting Rights Museum. And in the way of things, my father’s work – very much together with that of my mother – was the family work. We constantly reflected on the need to seek justice, and how, in the words of Amos, also quoted by King, we could work to “let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

And so we come to today, Yom Kippur. And we will soon read Isaiah, who tells us about fasting. And why do we read him today, 2,700 years after his words were uttered? Because his words speak to us, as they have throughout history, and have met the test of time. And Isaiah describes the failures of both the ancient and modern Yom Kippur fast – that is, we fast, sit through hours of services, and then, we go for it: lox, bagels, melons, the works. Some kind of fast! But not the right fast, says Isaiah. The right fast is:

• to break the bonds of injustice and remove the heavy yoke;
• to let the oppressed go free and release all those enslaved;
• to share your bread with the hungry;
• to take the homeless poor into your home.

Great stuff for our liberal congregation of today. And, I think, a link to my own prophets, Peter and Martin.

If we mean to follow Isaiah, we have our work cut out for us. What indeed is the right fast? We are not going to repair the world today, but perhaps we can address a piece of it. Where to start? The injustices of our day – the income inequality, the disastrous relationship between police and minority communities, the 14 million people who pass through or are in jail each year, the refugees fleeing from destruction in Syria, the starvation and disease in much of the world – are as prevalent today as in the ancient world, and the wealthy – that is, us – are satisfied. Isaiah says “not good enough” to forego food for a day and pat ourselves on the back.

Isaiah, Peter and Martin are the gadflies, as Socrates was called: they are annoying people who exhort us to live up to our dreams of a better world – and how we – not merely divine intervention – are responsible for making it so.

We are charged not only to contemplate prophetic words, but to live them: to harmonize our voices together with others; to demand justice; to recognize and cease our own oppressions, and to help and feed the poor. By living our words, so may we help to repair the world.