King, Heschel, and You

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on January 17th over MLK Day Weekend. Rabbi Lizzi was fresh off of giving the prayer at Mayor Brandon Johnson’s MLK breakfast where former Vice President Kamala Harris was in attendance. It was kind of a big deal, and if you’re feeling like you missed out, don’t worry, she gives a great recap, just like you get a great recap of every sermon here on Contact Chai Podcast. Have you dropped a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen?

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

This sermon was delivered at our service on January 17th, 2026 over MLK Day Weekend. You can listen to this drash on Contact Chai Podcast (are you subscribed?) or watch it on our YouTube channel.
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It's great to be here with all of you, on this Martin Luther King Day weekend, for Ezra's bar mitzvah, so much to celebrate. It also feels to me like the organizations I care about have extended Martin Luther King Day weekend not just into next week but into last week and so I have already been to two major events this week, and I’ve got another two next Monday. I’m not complaining though. It is inspiring and important to be reminded of not just how visionary, but how persistent and how relentless a person needs to be who cares about realizing the promise of this country in a moment in time when the power structures do not want to share it. Both of the events I went to this week felt timely, necessary, and inspiring, and I want to encourage you, if you have the opportunity to do anything in honor of MLK day

I am always struck at this time of year, by the confluence of the subject matter of civil rights activism in America, and the story we read in the Torah at this time of year every single year. There’s something about this time on the Gregorian calendar, which is is to say, mid-January, and the Hebrew calendar, which is to say, the time we always open and read the book of Exodus, that feels like it converges on a theme and is just begging us to hear it. So I’ll share it with you by way of a story, about this date on the calendar, and about this parasha.

Exactly 63 years ago, this weekend, just north of here up at the Edgewater Hotel, there was a gathering of over 700 faith leaders — Catholic Protestant and Jewish — called the Conference on Race and Religion. It was there that a white haired rabbi born in Warsaw, educated in Berlin, who had lost his entire family in the death camps in Europe, got up and gave an eloquent speech (in English, his 6th language) that attracted the attention of a young black pastor half his age from Atlanta, already leading the civil rights movement. That rabbi was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and he began his remarks like this:

“At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me.” While Pharaoh retorted: “Who is the Lord, that I should heed this voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” Heschel went on,”The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The exodus began, but is far from having been completed. In fact, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea than for a Negro to cross certain university campuses.” 

Rev Dr Martin Luther King heard these words and knew that he found an ally, someone to march with. They did not have the same history, and they did not agree on everything, but they shared a vision for equal justice and dignity under the law, for all of God’s children. 

https://youtu.be/ljBbGa0Bfds

I was asked to give a prayer at the Mayor’s MLK breakfast yesterday/today. I knew I would be one of the only Jews in a room full of 1,000 people who don’t know much about Judaism. I knew that in the house would be Mayor Brandon Johnson and VP Kamala Harris, both of whom large swaths of people have decided they can’t work with because political choices those leaders made challenge some of their core convictions. And I get it! In the presence of a robust democracy with good options to choose from — we can prioritize single issues that way, focusing on one group’s pain or needs and ignoring the bigger picture, the larger system in which we operate, because we figure the system is resilient. We figure, we have time. Yet. Here we are. With ICE agents menacing our streets and shooting protesters, with the constitution feeling like mere kindling for a new American order. 

By the way, welcome to Mishkan. I’ve never given a political sermon in my life before, so I thought I’d try it out today with you. You’ll tell me what you think. 

So, knowing all of that, I want to share with you what I said this/yesterday morning to that room of 1000, hoping the Mayor was listening, hoping VP Harris could hear me, and hoping that the next time we have a national crisis looming, people of conscience can work together to not only avert that crisis, but to imagine and work toward something better. 

But I am inspired by people who choose to form alliances in the presence of their differences. I began with the story about Heschel at the Conference on Race and Religion. And I said…

I can only imagine if Heschel and King were to have a reunion today. Heschel might say, it was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea, than for a family in Little Village to feel safe walking their kids to school. Or for women in half the states in America to get reproductive care and abortion if they need one. It was easier for the children of Israel to cross the Red Sea, than for a trans kid to get the health care they need to grow up feeling right and healthy in their bodies and minds. Or for an asylum-seeker to seek refuge in our country without being treated as a criminal. Or for a voter in too many parts of this country to trust that their voice will be heard rather than suppressed. Or for a public servant or a doctor or scientist or university professor to tell the truth without fear of retaliation, political interference and intimidation, or for a poor family to count on food, housing, and health care not being pulled out from under them in the richest country in the world.

Pharaoh didn’t go anywhere. Because Pharaoh isn’t a person but a system, any system that hardens its heart, creating safety for some by denying it to others. But just like Pharoah didn’t go anywhere, neither did Moses. Moses too, is a system, a coalition of people of conscience and moral courage, and of faith communities who — hear me well — do not need to agree on everything everywhere in the world in order to join hands and march toward a promised land here in Chicago. Moses is not just King and Heschel. It’s people in this room with whom I have stood shoulder to shoulder singing, marching, organizing, protesting, supporting and defending one another and the people of our city.

I offered gratitude to our Mayor and our Governor for modeling courage over capitulation in the face of inhumane policies. And I offer gratitude to those who marched before us, to Dr. King, to Rabbi Heschel, and also to Chicago rabbis like Rabbi Robert Marx, one of the early leaders in the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs who worked closely with Dr. King on issues of housing and segregation; I have so much gratitude for my own rabbi, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, who was five years older than Dr. King, and marched with him and with John Louis in Alabama for civil rights and preached it up here from the bima. But I don’t just want to look backward at how great Jewish leaders of the past marched and stood alongside great black civil right leaders. I want to pray that we inherit their legacy as our own. That we walk forward by their light, through their example, in their footsteps. I want to ask that we join hands across the distances and differences that divide us, and now I ask that you actually join hands with the person sitting next to you. We need each other. 

Turn to a neighbor and say I need you. Turn the other way and say I need you. We need each other. We need each other to both be honest– you about what troubles you and keeps you up and night, and you also need to able to hear the truth of another without denying it or pushing it away, so that we can join hands to do the work that is ours to do together. Not by denying our differences but by understanding them and recognizing that there is time and a place to lift them up, and the time and the place to hear the larger call we are here to answer together. I don’t need to tell a room full of law professors– this democracy isn’t God given or something we can take for granted. People made it… people can destroy it too. So it’s something we have to nurture, protect and fight for, even and especially when it means working alongside people with whom we don’t see eye to eye on everything.

Yehi ratson mil’faneicha Adonai Elohei avoteinu vimoteinu — may the God who walked with those who came before us, walk with us and help us to be army of compassion and courage we need to be to take on Pharoah and to take care of one another as we march through this wilderness together toward a better place, united by the belief that this country can and must live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all. On this Martin Luther King Day weekend, as we read Parashat Vayera, in this we pray. 

Shabbat shalom.