Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
"I feel as though this experience will affect my entire life!" That's how Harry Kalodner, a member of Sinai Temple's Confirmation Class, described the retreat he and nine other Sinai students from the Springfield synagogue experienced at the beginning of February. This year's Confirmation Class was led by their rabbi, Mark Shapiro, on what was called a civil rights journey. Over a three day period the students visited Atlanta, Ga., plus three hot spots from the 1960s civil rights movement: Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham, Ala. (The trip was made possible by grants for year round youth experiences from the Harold Grinspoon Supporting Foundation.) "We made this civil rights journey," Rabbi Shapiro explained, "because I wanted our youngsters to live out the words of the Passover prayer book in every generation everyone should feel as if he or she was a slave and left Egypt. Our goal was to explore the liberation of African-Americans and to use that experience as a way for understanding our own responsibility in moral struggles back then and now." The trip began in Selma with a walking tour of the neighborhood where, in 1965, activists developed the idea of a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. Joanne Bland, an African-American woman who was 11-years-old in 1965, told the story of her own experiences in joining the marchers and being driven back by tear gas on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that leads out of Selma. Bland recalled the sounds of her family and friends fleeing from the state troopers on what was called "Bloody Sunday." She then explained how she and thousands of others returned to the bridge weeks later to insist it was their right to march in order to win the right to vote. "The most awesome moment," said student Atlee Chait, "was when we ourselves got to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Imagining the police lines and the marchers bravely proceeding two by two exactly where we stood was unforgettable." The Sinai Temple group also learned about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who walked arm in arm with Dr. King at the front of the march when it finally took place. When the march ended after five days on the hard road, Rabbi Heschel commented that he had never felt the pulse of freedom so strongly as on the march. "I felt as though my legs were praying" are the words he used to describe the event. Next stop was Montgomery, Ala. The group visited the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization dedicated to fighting hate groups through major court cases. There the students heard more about Dr. King, but also had an opportunity to learn about some of the less well known people who fought for freedom. "The small people were there every step of the way" was Cydney Weiner's response to the Law Center. And one of those "small" people from Montgomery was destined to become an icon of the era. The group learned about her at the museum that bears her name. She was Rosa Parks, a clerk at a local department store, who made history on Dec. 1, 1955. That was the day she refused to give up her bus seat to a white person. The presentation of this event in the Rosa Parks Museum began with a movie on the history of Montgomery's segregation which then faded away to reveal a life-size replica of the bus Parks refused to leave. A narrator then told the minute-by-minute story of how Parks, the bus driver and the police interacted on that fateful day. Rabbi Shapiro said, "Even though we all knew Rosa Parks would not get hurt that afternoon, we still stood there with our hearts beating. Would she hold onto her courage? Would she be able to stand firm before the threat of violence?" Questions like these ran through the weekend as the students continued on to Birmingham, Ala., and then Atlanta. In Birmingham, there were challenging moments as Reverend Calvin Woods led the students on a tour of the area where Birmingham's civil rights protesters were set upon by dogs and fire hoses. Rev. Woods is close to 90-years-old and vividly recalled the church meetings that prepared the protesters to meet the angry mobs outside. He led the class in singing some of the hymns that gave him the courage to move out into danger. The final day of the trip included two major highlights. In order to understand more fully how Jews of the South saw themselves, the group visited the site where Leo Frank was lynched in 1915. Frank was a Jew who had come south from New York to manage a pencil factory in Atlanta. When a youngster by the name of Mary Phagan was found dead in the factory, Frank was falsely accused of the crime. He was unfairly convicted of murder. But even though the governor of Georgia commuted his sentence, it was too late. Angry citizens kidnapped Frank from his jail cell and hanged him from a tree. Needless to say, Atlanta's Jews as well as Jews across the South were shocked and frightened by the Leo Frank story. Memories of his lynching continued to haunt many southern Jews as they thought about their own safety over the decades that followed. The last stop on the journey for Sinai's students was the Martin Luther King Center for Non-Violent Change. Here the group came closest to the story of Dr. King. Just outside the modern museum dedicated to King's life, the group saw the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This was the church where Dr. King served as pastor following in the footsteps of his father. Beside the church, the group visited the memorial where Dr. King and his wife are buried. King's words were in the air as was an Elie Weisel quote the group had encountered earlier in the weekend, "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor. Never the victim." Student Jillian Bertuzzi captured the impact of the trip in these words: "Throughout this journey we have been able to look through the eyes of others who experienced first hand what it was like during the civil rights movement. These were moments of a lifetime. We have learned the power of one voice and what one person is capable of doing on their own when it comes to changing the world." | ||||||
