A Message for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It’s a day when all of us could pause and dream. We still need to dream. We need to dream about the eradication of hatred. 

This is a time when hatred is growing . . . [with] a substantial presence in our country and in our world. Hatred is something which the Jewish community feels on a daily basis, and we hope and pray that the world continues to dream the dream. But there are other pieces to what Martin Luther King Jr. in his most famous speech on his most famous day articulated. He also pleaded for fighting the battle against hatred with dignity and with discipline, and not with bringing bitterness and hatred to that battle itself. 

He called upon all of us to trust, to try to build this with trust, with partners that maybe seem to come from “the other side,” with an understanding that . . .  a society that is infected by hate is not just the problem of those who are most frequently its victims, but it’s everybody’s problem. And so we need to work together and somehow build trust with each other, finding the partners wherever they are to elevate love, dignity, collaboration, moving toward the celebration of the fulfillment of everybody’s dream of shalom ba’aretz, of peace in this land.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, zt”l, served as the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.