The following was delivered by R' David Basior at Garfield High School at the 41st annual celebration for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as part of the Seattle MLK Coalition. He was honored to be asked to offer the closing prayer of the rally in the gymnasium.
It is the service of my heart today to recite a prayer to close this remarkable gathering and conjure our collective gratitude and praise for its presenters and speakers, founders and sustainers, elders, organizers, and youth. And for the tribal leaders on whose land we celebrate this birthday together. In some of my people’s languages: adank, gracias, todah rabah, shukran, skoy’ach, hazak u’varuch, and heiskasi’um: thank you, and may you and yours be strengthened and blessed.
I call forth my ancestors and teachers as I invite us into prayer:
Birshut, chaverimot – with your permission, my friends,
N’vareich et makor chayenu – let us bless the Source of Life
Let us bless the Source of Life which has indeed sanctified us all today by stirring in us our desire to take up the unfinished dream of the Rev. Dr. Martin Lurther King Jr. reaffirming the ancient words of Rabbi Tarfon of the Mishnah: we are not obligated to finish the task, but nor are we free to desist from it.
Let us bless the Source of life who awakens us to the teaching that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. And may we understand neighbor “not [as] a geographic term, [but] a moral concept,” as Rabbi Joachim Prinz implored at the March on Washington setting the stage for Rev. Dr. King to articulate his Dream.
Let us bless the Source of Life who gives humans the capacity to understand, to discern, to heed, to learn, to teach, to keep, to make, and to fulfill all that we can comprehend with love. That the only enemies are the temptations within us that keep us from living into what Rev. Dr. King called “nonviolent coexistence” with one another.
Let us bless the Source of Life who gave our ancestors the perspective that all is one – that our interconnection and interdependence is undeniable, and which gave them and us now the courage to pass this teaching down from generation to generation, and to attempt to live it as we walk and roll on the way.
We must by now this morning have a clear sense of what these blessings mean. Surely by now, oh Source, we have the power to act with clarity of vision and of purpose banishing “poverty, racism, and militarism.” To fulfill these blessings not just in recitation, but in embodiment, honoring your gift of life in our ways of being and doing.
We must by now this morning have a clear idea of what it means that yes, we are each a distinct and beautiful individual human from a distinct and beautiful people, like mine. And we must by now this morning have a clear understanding that while on one hand that is true, on the other, it is also true what Rev. Dr. King once wrote in a jail in Birmingham that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. [that] We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Let us all who are here have this clarity now, not more than ever, but forever more. That there is no liberation for you if there is no liberation for me. That there is no liberation for me if there is no liberation for you. We can all be safe. We can all be fed. We can all have homes. We can all reciprocate for one another the dignity we each need to thrive and belong if we, “rapidly…shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society” as Rev. Dr. King put it a year before he was killed.
And while yes, he did earlier say “the time is always right to do what is right,” he spoke that day of “the fierce urgency of now…[that] there is such a thing as being too late.”
Source of Life, grant us the fortitude and audacity to forgive ourselves as we are right now being too late for so many. From the streets of Seattle to what is left of the roads of Gaza, we are currently being too late for so, so many. Let shame not dominate, no, let us instead own our mistakes and be able to act now with a clear and aligned heart and hand. Let us bless that Source of Life that might provide us a path from denial, avoidance, and even management toward genuine transformation. Toward persistence. Toward resilience. Toward a mutual aid and a public show of love that Dr. Cornell West calls justice.
Yitgadal v’yikadash shmay rabah – may the great name of Divine Love be exalted as we remember those we’ve lost along the way. May their memories be a blessing.
And for those of us who still savor this great gift we call life, may we see the divine in each of our faces. And while we might pause to rest in the name of sustained action, may we not wait another moment to further the dream.
And let us say: Amen.
Bibliography for above references:
Rabbi Joachim Prinz at the March on Washington, 1963
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, August 1963
Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967
MLK at Stanford, 1967
Diane Douglas, Talya Gillman, and Lian Caspi at Limmud Seattle 2024 for transmitting a useful framing of conflict engagement
It is the service of my heart today to recite a prayer to close this remarkable gathering and conjure our collective gratitude and praise for its presenters and speakers, founders and sustainers, elders, organizers, and youth. And for the tribal leaders on whose land we celebrate this birthday together. In some of my people’s languages: adank, gracias, todah rabah, shukran, skoy’ach, hazak u’varuch, and heiskasi’um: thank you, and may you and yours be strengthened and blessed.
I call forth my ancestors and teachers as I invite us into prayer:
Birshut, chaverimot – with your permission, my friends,
N’vareich et makor chayenu – let us bless the Source of Life
Let us bless the Source of Life which has indeed sanctified us all today by stirring in us our desire to take up the unfinished dream of the Rev. Dr. Martin Lurther King Jr. reaffirming the ancient words of Rabbi Tarfon of the Mishnah: we are not obligated to finish the task, but nor are we free to desist from it.
Let us bless the Source of life who awakens us to the teaching that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. And may we understand neighbor “not [as] a geographic term, [but] a moral concept,” as Rabbi Joachim Prinz implored at the March on Washington setting the stage for Rev. Dr. King to articulate his Dream.
Let us bless the Source of Life who gives humans the capacity to understand, to discern, to heed, to learn, to teach, to keep, to make, and to fulfill all that we can comprehend with love. That the only enemies are the temptations within us that keep us from living into what Rev. Dr. King called “nonviolent coexistence” with one another.
Let us bless the Source of Life who gave our ancestors the perspective that all is one – that our interconnection and interdependence is undeniable, and which gave them and us now the courage to pass this teaching down from generation to generation, and to attempt to live it as we walk and roll on the way.
We must by now this morning have a clear sense of what these blessings mean. Surely by now, oh Source, we have the power to act with clarity of vision and of purpose banishing “poverty, racism, and militarism.” To fulfill these blessings not just in recitation, but in embodiment, honoring your gift of life in our ways of being and doing.
We must by now this morning have a clear idea of what it means that yes, we are each a distinct and beautiful individual human from a distinct and beautiful people, like mine. And we must by now this morning have a clear understanding that while on one hand that is true, on the other, it is also true what Rev. Dr. King once wrote in a jail in Birmingham that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. [that] We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
Let us all who are here have this clarity now, not more than ever, but forever more. That there is no liberation for you if there is no liberation for me. That there is no liberation for me if there is no liberation for you. We can all be safe. We can all be fed. We can all have homes. We can all reciprocate for one another the dignity we each need to thrive and belong if we, “rapidly…shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society” as Rev. Dr. King put it a year before he was killed.
And while yes, he did earlier say “the time is always right to do what is right,” he spoke that day of “the fierce urgency of now…[that] there is such a thing as being too late.”
Source of Life, grant us the fortitude and audacity to forgive ourselves as we are right now being too late for so many. From the streets of Seattle to what is left of the roads of Gaza, we are currently being too late for so, so many. Let shame not dominate, no, let us instead own our mistakes and be able to act now with a clear and aligned heart and hand. Let us bless that Source of Life that might provide us a path from denial, avoidance, and even management toward genuine transformation. Toward persistence. Toward resilience. Toward a mutual aid and a public show of love that Dr. Cornell West calls justice.
Yitgadal v’yikadash shmay rabah – may the great name of Divine Love be exalted as we remember those we’ve lost along the way. May their memories be a blessing.
And for those of us who still savor this great gift we call life, may we see the divine in each of our faces. And while we might pause to rest in the name of sustained action, may we not wait another moment to further the dream.
And let us say: Amen.
Bibliography for above references:
Rabbi Joachim Prinz at the March on Washington, 1963
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, August 1963
Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967
MLK at Stanford, 1967
Diane Douglas, Talya Gillman, and Lian Caspi at Limmud Seattle 2024 for transmitting a useful framing of conflict engagement
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