Civil Rights Journey Reflection, Qabbalat Shabbat, 11/21/25
Rabbi Slipakoff, Ellen Messer, Ellen Fishman, Jen Grella, Tony Tauber, and Cathleen Cavell
Qabbalat Shabbat, November 21, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston
Rabbi Slipakoff:
Alongside 20 members of our Temple Israel community, I recently had the honor to travel from Atlanta to Anniston, Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma, tracing the path of the Civil Rights Movement and those who risked everything to pursue justice. Some of what you will hear tonight is difficult. The stories are painful, the images unsettling. Some of what you will hear is beautiful. Messages of light in the darkness and testament to the human capacity to choose love in the face of hate. Our sacred task is to bear witness with open eyes and open hearts.
To be a witness is not a passive act—it is a moral obligation. It demands that we listen, reflect, and allow these truths to reshape how we live and how we work to repair our world.
A quick but very sincere special thanks to Tali Puterman and our tour guide Avi Edelman who helped put together and lead this powerful experience.
And without further adieu, I want to invite up several of our participants to share reflections on some of the moments that moved them.
Ellen Messer:
We began our journey in Atlanta. We visited the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site: his childhood home, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the King Center. Dr. King and Coretta Scott King lay at rest surrounded by flowing water, echoing justice rolling like a mighty stream also helps to prevent vandalism, which unfortunately is very prevalent, as we witnessed in the destruction of the eternal flame, set on the side of the paths, which had been extinguished by some nasty act and not yet restored.
We then toured The Temple, a Reform congregation bombed by White Supremacists in 1958 for its civil rights ofo leadership. They call it “the bomb that healed”. The outcome produced broad based political support for the synagogue and denouncing of vicious bigotry and racism, from local, state, and national officials, and much of the public. A good outcome not necessarily replicated elsewhere, where synagogue leaders were often instructed by their Boards to tone down their civil rights rhetoric.
That first day grounded us: this journey was not only about learning history, but about confronting our shared responsibility and the deep connections between Jewish values and the ongoing struggle for equality.
Every site we visited carried Torah connections: “be a blessing” like Abraham; generosity and hospitality like Rebekhah at the well; and very basic sustenance, recalling how prisons served black-eyed peas three times a day – echoing Jacob’s lentil stew offered to Esau in Toldot. We also saw how creating signs on the land marks history and relationships, as when Jacob and Laban set stones to seal their non-aggression pact in Vayetzei. Finally, there is the pervasive question of who is a “stranger” and “alien,” Abraham among the Hittites in Hebron: what is their status in relationship to others who live and have roots in the land?
Jen Grella:
From Atlanta we traveled to Anniston, Alabama, where one of the most violent Freedom Ride attacks took place.
In May of 1961, the first 13 Freedom Riders boarded two buses in Washington D.C. bound for New Orleans. Seven of these Riders – two white men, one white woman, three black men and one black woman – were on the Greyhound bus that stopped at the station in Anniston, Alabama. While in the narrow alley next to the station, the bus was set upon by a violent mob of the Ku Klux Klan who attempted to board the bus and beat the Riders. The mob slashed the bus tires and followed the bus out of town and down Highway 202 for 6 miles, knowing that it would have to pull over when the tires went flat. In the spirit of gruesome entertainment, typical during lynchings and beatings, a mob of men, women and children spectators stood watching as a crude Molotov cocktail was thrown into the bus. The doors of the bus were pinned shut by the terrorists chanting “burn them alive” as the passengers tried to escape the flames.
A 12 year old white girl, Janie Forsyth, from a nearby store ran forward with water to help them…and was run out of town for her courage.
Sixty-five years later, we stood in that alley beneath a mural that read ‘Could You Get On The Bus?’ and listened to Georgia Calhoun, now 95, who witnessed the violence and has spent her life working to heal her community.
Rabbi Slipakoff then asked us: Would we have gotten on the bus? Could you join the Movement in the Moment?
My reflection:
- ‘Does your moral compass lead you to board?
- “In the dark, alone, is the solution to your individual calculus to stand up, stand by or turn away?”
- When they come for others, will you stand in the way, knowing they will eventually come for you?’”
Ellen Fishman:
As we traveled, we encountered the painful juxtapositions of the American South—places of breathtaking beauty holding histories of deep violence. The beautiful fall days and vibrant landscapes made it almost impossible to imagine the horrors that occurred here. I noticed the contrast of the Alabama River beside the Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Garden, and read about the ghastly sound of chains of the slaves being transported on the riverboats – somehow ignored by passersby.
One striking impression was the contrast in how history is remembered. The Confederate section of the Selma Cemetery, which includes the grave of the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is beautifully maintained, with manicured grounds and clear markers. While others, like the Leo Frank lynching memorial and the site of the burned Freedom Riders bus in Anniston, felt intentionally hidden away, and under-resourced. Easy to overlook by the design of those who would rather not share that history.
I could not overlook the stories of children. From slavery to Jim Crow to our modern prison industrial complex, the way that institutionalized racism has brutalized our children was on painful display. In the Legacy Museum, images of families torn apart by slavery echoed the modern photo of a mother clutching her adolescent son as he was convicted and sentenced as an adult. Today, the Equal Justice Initiative works tirelessly by advocating against harsh punishments for juveniles. Against the backdrop of pain, we were time and again introduced to people and organizations working to bring light and love into this ongoing narrative.
Tony Tauber:
This trip took me deeper into understanding the complexities of the southern Jewish experience.
In advance of our visit to Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, we learned about Rabbi Milton Grafman who led that congregation for almost 35 years and was among the eight clergy who signed the April 1963 “Call for Unity” open letter that expressed support of addressing racial issues, but emphasized working with the courts and not by boycotts and demonstrations. In response Dr. King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” arguing direct action was warranted.
Some months later, in September of that year, the infamous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church led to the death of four young girls who Rabbi Grafman invoked during Kaddish on Rosh Hashanah a few days afterwards. We were hosted at that same Temple over sixty years later to hear, alongside some of their congregation, from “the fifth girl”, Sarah Collins Rudolph who was gravely injured during that attack, yet survived.
Two days after that visit, we went to Temple Mishkan Israel in Selma, to hear from the two remaining members. Though they were young and not aware during the 1965 Selma voting rights march, they described that at least one then congregant was among the white community members deputized by the Sheriff’s department that assaulted civil rights activists during the aborted 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery and who authored segregationist editorials in the local paper.
These stories added to my understanding of Jewish experiences during the Civil Rights campaign of the mid-20th century which had previously been informed by the familiar photos showing Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or the tale of Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the two Jewish civil rights workers killed alongside a black colleague in Mississippi which led to an FBI investigation and eventual trial of their killers.
While at The Temple in Atlanta, someone asked their rabbi about their congregation’s stance on politics of today. She gestured in response [holding arms wide], “We have some people over here, and some people over here.” A common response today which mirrored the realities of our collective past.
Cathleen Cavell:
I found three of the courageous women who told their stories to us especially unforgettable: Lynda Blackmon Lowery, Sarah Collins Rudolph and Reverend Monica Spencer. Lynda was the youngest marcher to complete the five day journey from Selma to Montgomery, arrested 11 times by age 14, and she bears the scars; Sarah is the fifth little girl injured by the Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on September 15, 1963, who lost sight in one eye but was the only child to survive; and Reverend Monica, is the Georgia State Director of Vote Riders, which helps find and pay for proof of citizenship to secure voting rights for everyone who needs their help.
An aside by Lynda stays with me: after she spoke to us for more than an hour, weeping a little while recounting her mother’s death in childbirth (which was avoidable if the whites-only hospital in Selma had provided needed blood), and her own savage beating at the Edmund Pettus Bridge (which required 35 stitches to repair).
After that recital, Lynda mentioned in passing that, every election day, she drives all around Selma, picking up people she knows and people she doesn’t. She tells them about her 11 arrests and about celebrating her 15th birthday on the March to Montgomery when a court order finally allowed the marchers to cross the Bridge safely. Then she tells them they have to vote because she needed 35 stitches to protect their right to do that.
Rabbi Slipakoff:
Thank you everyone for your words and your commitment. There’s a semi-joke I learned about Civil Rights Educators that says the Movement is too often taught that Rosa Parks sat on a bus, Dr. King gave a speech, a law was passed, and everybody cheered. Clearly, far from it.
If there is one thing I can drive home after our journey is the emphasis that The Movement is bigger than any one person, and requires a diverse collection of skills and efforts sourced from every person committed to making a change.
JoAnne Bland, who joined her older sister Linda to fight for Voting Rights in Selma
And will continue to fight for rights and equity until she can’t any longer
Is known to teach that
Movements for social change are like jigsaw puzzles.
Everyone is a piece, and if your piece is missing, the picture is not complete.
You are the most important piece.
So the invitation is for each of us to add our momentum to the movement.
Volunteer with us to feed those who are hungry
Break bread with us as we support Black Owned Businesses
Be heard with us at a GBIO listening campaign
And the list goes on and on and on
May we find the courage to show up where we are needed,
the strength to stay in the struggle
and the faith to believe that our collective efforts can bend our world closer to justice, dignity, and hope.
Shabbat Shalom.