Rabbi Marx is the founder of Chicago's Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. A righteous Jew, for sure.

After having been asked to monitor Dr. King’s open-housing march through Marquette Park in 1966, Rabbi Marx wrote a letter to friends and the broader rabbinic community, explaining his decision to join the civil rights movement, realizing that up until then he'd been on the wrong side of the movement — and history.

An excerpt from his letter:

You may think that I am insensitive to the criticism that I know has been voiced on many occasions over my involvement in civil rights causes: why don't I spend more time on Judaism? Why do I dissipate so much of my energy on a cause that is not ours? I am aware of these criticisms and I am pained by them: for you see, I feel that freedom is Judaism, that Passover is not 3,000 years old — that it is today and that we are part of it. I feel even more deeply that unless Jews — Jews who are devoted to their faith and their synagogues, as I am devoted to my faith and my synagogue — unless all of us are involved in the crucial issues of the world, Judaism will not exist in future generations for our children and our children's children. And perhaps it ought not to exist.

And so, tonight, we are reminded, through the telling of this Jewish liberation story, that we were once slaves, then refugees. But we do not just retell the story. We are commanded to imagine ourselves as though we, personally, went forth from Egypt – to imagine the experience of being victimized because of who we are, of being enslaved, and of, ultimately, being freed. And to reflect on all those people who today are not yet free.

Passover is not 3,000 years old. It is today and we are part of it.


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story