The same sensitivity that characterized Jewish Americans during
the 1960s and mobilized them to participate together with King
in the civil rights movement continues to live in the hearts and
minds of the citizens of the Jewish state today. Rev. Martin
Luther King Photo: DeMarsico, Dick Just one day before voters
here celebrated the gift of democracy, the United States of
America – a country with which Israel shares so many ideals –
had it On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Barack Obama, America’s
first black president, delivered his second inaugural address.
the ties between the Jewish state and the US are strong in
profound ways, so too were the ties between Jews and the civil
rights movement headed by Though they made up just 2 percent of
the American population, nearly half of the white activists who
headed South in “Freedom Rides” or who participated in the March
1965 march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery were Jewish,
according to Jewish Dimensions of Social Justice, a 1998
publication of the Reform Move