Community Corner
MLK, Jr. Interfaith Service Preached the Responsibility of the Individual
23rd annual event was held Monday afternoon.
If there’s one thing we must know, Rabbi Charles Kroloff said, it’s that “what binds us together is that the job we are doing is not good enough.”
Kroloff spoke these words as encouragement on Monday, as part of his address during the 23rd annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Interfaith Commemoration Service at Temple Emmanu-El in Westfield. The annual commemoration includes speech and song that invokes the spirit of Dr. King's vision for mankind.
The afternoon started with a march down East Broad Street from the MLK memorial at the Westfield traffic circle in wonderfully unseasonal weather.
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At the temple, leaders of Westfield's houses of worship got up to share their thoughts about the late Rev. King, but it was rabbi emeritus Kroloff's words which were the centerpiece of the afternoon. He related first hand his experiences growing up in the segregated South, recalling the commands on public transit for whites to "sit from the front back, and blacks from the back to the front" as clearly as if it were yesterday.
Kroloff commented on his experiences during the Civil Rights era and beyond, as well as King's history. He noted that in this day in age, wide disparities between rich and poor, opportunity and hopelessness, persist in America, noting that it’s almost like two separate nations exist at once. But he listed the lessons he'd learned from King and others, among which was the power of faith and necessity of action.
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“Faith that does not lead to action is hollow and has no enduring value,” he said. And action, he said could not be deferred because each and every day is an opportunity to make a difference. "Hope delayed," he continued, "is hope denied." The poignancy of this remark elicited 'amens' and other vocal affirmations from the congregation.
During the service, an interfaith choir sang songs such as “This Little Light of Mine” and ended the program with the congregation in linked arms for “We Shall Overcome.”
Area school children were also honored during the service for the poems, essays and artwork they created in honor of Dr. King.
“Today Westfield remembers Dr. King’s life with a sense of pride,” Fourth Ward Councilman Keith Loughlin told the crowd.
Westfield’s MLK, Jr. interfaith ceremonies began 22 years ago after members from the Baptist Church, St. Luke’s AME Zion Church, the Westfield Neighborhood Council and the Westfield Community Center all came together at that time to form an MLK Day committee, and from there the first service was held at Bethel in 1988.
