For the 24th year in a row, a local event will honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King on his birthday, Jan. 15.
This year’s event, free to everyone, will feature Rabbi James Mirel, who will speak about the rabbis who marched with King and were heroes during the civil rights era. Emma Amiad, who has organized the previous events honoring King’s work, also organized this one.
“In a community like ours that is so white and so middle class, it is easy for people to think that it (racism) is no longer a problem,” she said. “We have to work on it individually and as a society. We must remember what people paid in blood sweat and tears, and in some cases their lives, to be where we are now.”
Over the years, Amiad has hosted Martin Luther King commemorations of all kinds, with some featuring music, others calling upon audience members to share their experiences with racism and others with a range of public speakers, from pastors to a state supreme court justice.
This year, Amiad said she chose to invite Mirel because of his personal involvement with the struggle for civil rights. While she has known him for 35 years, she said she only recently learned about this aspect of his work and of other rabbis’ involvement with the civil rights movement.
“I had not paid attention,” she said. “I thought if I had not, then probably a lot of people had not.”
She added that the civil rights movement was an interfaith one, with activists who were Christians, Jews and Buddhists, all of whom were vulnerable to being beaten and jailed.
In 1961, Amiad said, King came to Seattle and spoke at Temple De Hirsh before a standing-room-only crowd. Many of the mainstream churches were unwilling to host the civil rights leader at that time, and this event gave birth to an ongoing interfaith discussion to which Mirel was a part.
Mirel has been a community leader for over 40 years. He is rabbi emeritus at Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue and currently serves the Wood River Jewish Congregation in Sun Valley, Idaho. He will be joined by his wife, Julie Mirel, a renowned singer and catorial soloist, to share music of the civil rights era. He will also show film clips from that time.
Amiad noted that Mirel is an exceptionally good speaker and that he also has been a bass player in a Klezmer band, a combination that she said bodes well for a meaningful evening.
Amiad, who shares a birthday with King, said cake will be served, and donations will be accepted to the Interfaith Council to Prevent Homelessness; she is the president of that group’s board.
Twenty-four years is a long time to host any event, but Amiad says she plans to keep on.
“As long as I can do it, I will do it,” she said. “Some of us do not want anyone to forget those years.”
This year’s event will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, at Havurat Ee Shalom, 15401 Westside Hwy. SW.
