 There's a concept in the Jewish faith. It's known as tikkun olam, and the translation from Hebrew is Repairing the world The central idea is that this is a never-ending process and Well, it's not incumbent on any one person to complete the task At the same time each of us has an obligation to play a part in moving it forward But this comes with the somewhat bitter sweet understanding that as human beings Our time here is finite, and we won't let get to live to see the fruits of our labor In his letter from a Birmingham jail Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Examined this paradoxical notion of time and the trap that it tends to lay in the human psyche He details his growing impatience with the sluggish pace of justice Saying that for years I've heard the word weight He criticizes the white moderates who live by the myth of time this tragic misconception of time Strangely irrational notion that there's something within time that will inevitably cure the ills of society And he praises the growing group of activists who have recognized what he calls the urgency of the moment interestingly enough The language of the civil rights movement so focused on that pressing urgency is deeply grounded in ancient motifs from the Old Testament and through study of the Hebrew Bible Dr. King forged an interfaith partnership and meaningful friendship with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Here they are marching from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965 That's John Lewis at the far left Born in 1907 in Warsaw, Poland and Educated in Berlin Heschel author his doctoral dissertation as the Nazis were consolidating power Among the last Jews to secure an exit visa He immigrated to the United States in 1940 and watched helplessly from across the Atlantic Ocean While European Jewry was systematically destroyed in the span of a few years Among the millions murdered were his mother and his three sisters And haunted by the indifference to the plight of the Jewish people Heschel spent the rest of his life making a case for what human beings especially religious ones owe to the greater human cause He posited a theory that was radical in its time That political issues were actually moral issues even religious issues That working in service of God meant direct action here on earth That prayer had to be what he called a subversive act to alter the status quo and That the remaining Jews who had survived the war Had to be on the forefront of this burgeoning movement for social justice and equality playing out in the United States In the soul-searching years following the Holocaust Heschel was asked one question above all else Where was God his consistent rebuttal? where was man and He went on to turn the entire notion of religious devotion on its head in One of his seminal texts published in 1955 entitled God in search of man He theorized that while human beings wait for a just and righteous God to enact change you're on earth in Reality God waits on us to do just that and Though we remain devout Heschel was not focused on the afterlife But rather on the here and now a Solom understanding that something is asked of us in our time a Sacred deed he said Is we're heaven and earth meat in the 1960s as the civil rights movement began to gain momentum This revulsion to indifference that Heschel had merged with dr. King when they met in 1963 They centered their logic on the study of the Hebrew prophets, which was actually the subject of Heschel's dissertation The Hebrew word for prophets Nevi'im Translates to truth tellers Human though they were The prophets of the Hebrew Bible served as conduits between God and man deeply offended by oppression and injustice They often spoke uncomfortable truths to the children of Israel and they served as the communities broader moral conscience in their day The prophets were deemed extremists and King acknowledged as much In his letter from a Birmingham jail in response to those who had dismissed him as an extremist Was not Amos an extremist for justice he asked But the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be Will we be extremists for hate? Or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice? Or will we be extremists for the cause of justice and Heschel joined him in embracing this so-called extremism? He said to be moderate in the face of God would be a profanation In other words blasphemy and there were those in the Jewish clergy Who criticized Heschel and warned him to stay away from dr. King's growing movement they argued that? Jews should only be concerned with the plight of other Jews That the struggle for racial justice was not his fight But for Heschel and for King All people were inextricably linked regardless of faith or race Morally speaking There's no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself And in a free society Some are guilty But all are responsible And the same indignation burned in dr. King Said the bow of man's inhumanity does not toll for any one man It tolls for you for me for all of us Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and While communities of color have endured and persevered against racism for generations Recently broader segments of society have awoken to the unique and insidious way that That a bigotry and hatred poisoned humanity were at large So how should we think about dr. King's legacy and Rabbi Heschel's teachings today? Ironically these two deeply religious men remind us to lower our gaze from the heavens and Instead to hold it at eye level To look into the eyes of one another Something is asked of us The fight for humanity is our fight not God's But it is a holy one Years later Heschel recounted in his diary the March from Salma to Montgomery He said it felt as though he was praying with his feet. He was praying with his feet Prayer through direct action Prayer as a subversive act, but still how do we face this challenge of working To repair the world this eternal task of tikkun olam With that painful knowledge that our time here is short Perhaps the answer is to a skew waiting To reject that myth of time bemoaned by dr. King There is no convenient season approaching the ills of society won't wait on time instead time waits on us and In our capacity to act boldly and to rise to meet our human potential Heschel said That it's grave self-deception to assume that our destiny is just to be human In order to be human One must be more than human a Person must never stand still He must always rise. He must always climb Be stronger than you are but rising To that level of humanity will look different for all of us and so it's on each of us To chart our own path But in doing so I encourage you to think about time It's long arc But also its brevity and Where you might fit into it. I know I've asked a number of questions this evening and posed quite a few quotations Possibly too many but here we are But I'd like to leave you with one more 2000 years before dr. King and Rabbi Heschel Another Jewish sage and scholar was already wrestling with this notion of time And emphasizing the urgency of the moment His name was Hillel. He said he asked he asked a simple question That should be ringing in all of our years If not now when thank you very much