Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, second from right, marching with MLK at Selma March, 1965 Were he still alive today, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., would be 84 years old. Much of the current buzz surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington centers on speculation about what MLK would believe and where he would lead today. The 1963 March put the political spotlight on achieving color blind public accommodations, job opportunities, and voting rights. Speakers at the 2013 Commemoration emphasized that gains that have been made need to be protected and advanced, while highlighting new issues like racial profiling, immigration reform, and gender equality. Banners were raised in the audience picturing the Rev. King side-by-side with Trayvon Martin. Would King have embraced, in addition to the old liberal agenda, the current progressive agenda? Probably to some degree, but he might have surprised on some issues. One could speculate, for example, that as a Southern Black Baptist Minister, he might not have not been entirely comfortable with abortion rights. Such hypotheticals probably tell us more about those speculating than about King. We know much about MLK’s history, however, that warrants generalization. First, King emerged from anonymity out of the 1955 Montgomery Boycott Movement, sparked by Rosa Park’s refusal “to go to the back of the bus,” to become the charismatic leader of nonviolent, Gandhi-style civil rights protest identified with his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). But his “I Have A Dream” Speech at the 1963 March did not come out of the blue. The 1963 March was originally the idea of A. Philip Randolph of the Sleeping Car Porters Union who pressured FDR’s Administration with a threatened 1941 March on Washington. The specifics of the 1963 March were crystallized by King’s brain trust: Ella Jo Baker, who rose through the ranks of the NAACP; Bayard Rustin, an African American democratic socialist and pacifist who earlier “had a cup of coffee” as a member of the American Communist Party; and Stanley Levinson, a Jewish radical whom King later had to distance himself from because the FBI also accused Levinson, without conclusive evidence, of Communist party ties. This does not mean that King was merely a figurehead. He was instead the electric live wire who personified the civil rights movement by delivering the Speech that morally transformed America. Third, despite the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and beatification following his 1968 assassination in Memphis, King did not escape the bruising controversies of his time. In 1963, before he delivered “The Speech” he was buffeted between young student radicals of both races who called him “an Uncle Tom” for being too “moderate” and politicians in the Kennedy White House frightened by his “militancy.” Then, he was politically brutalized in 1966 when he carried his Freedom Crusade to Mayor Daley’s Chicago, as well as character-assassinated by J. Edgar Hoover’s leaking of tapes about King’s private life. Yet MLK, despite all, emerged as the only non-government figure to be celebrated by a national holiday, and a hero to succeeding generations of Americans—including especially American Jews—who venerate him and are happy that Jim Crow is dead. Why did the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., become “a folk hero” to American Jews? First, because he reverberates through American history, not as a progressive political icon, but as a latter-day Old Testament prophet who preached a universal, timeless message of biblically-rooted justice and tikkun olam. Today’s politics may be different, but—morally—it’s hard to imagine Rev. King appearing—as did his son, Martin Luther King III at the 2013 Commemoration—on the same stage with the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose civil rights advocacy is marred by his own history of promoting fraudulent rape accusations and anti-Jewish rabble rousing in the 1980s and1990s. Second, it must be remembered that Rev. King refused to associate with demagogues who appealed to hate including hatred of Israel. Just ten days before his assassination in Memphis, Rev. King declared: “I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can almost be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.” Third, Rev. King spoke out on behalf of Soviet Jews before many establishment Jewish leaders did, thereby helping to shape a new post-Holocaust generation of young Jewish activists. These are some of the reasons why the 1963 March energized American Jews. In the weeks leading up to the March, the American Jewish affirmed that “Jews have always been part of the eternal struggle for human dignity and social justice,” challenging its members in the South as well as North to participate in nonviolent civil rights demonstrations, and the Rev. King shared the platform with leaders of major Jewish organizations including the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the United Synagogue Council of America, and the Synagogue Council of America. Rabbi Joachim Prinz of the World Jewish Congress then spoke for them all when he said: “When I was a rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important that I learned . . . is that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel—with his own prophetic credentials who march with King at Selma in 1965—delivered a remarkable address at a Conference on Religion and Race six months before the 1963 March. He compared Moses’ first meeting with Pharaoh to “a summit meeting,” and then said: “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.” Alas, like Moses, Rev. King died before entering promised land. Today, we await the appearance of a new generation of leaders—black and white, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim who can resume King’s journey toward justice and lead us all closer to a land and world of promises fulfilled.