By Betzy Lynch in La Jolla, California
On Friday, I had the honor of attending the 41st Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Human Dignity Award Breakfast, hosted by the YMCAs of San Diego County, along with my colleagues from the Finest Community Coalition. One of the most powerful moments of the program was an artistic reading of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
As many of us know, or have learned, the speech was given in 1963 at the March on Washington, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the speech, Dr. King mentions specific places where the fight for civil and human rights was, and remains, most fiercely contested: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi.
Every time Rhys Green, the remarkable actor giving the reading, spoke aloud about Mississippi, my heart felt heavier. His performance transported me back to that historic moment in August 1963, but my thoughts also jumped to January 10, 2026, when an intentionally set fire nearly burned to the ground one of the only synagogues in Mississippi.
How far we have come. And how far we still have to go.
Leaving breakfast, I spent much of the day reflecting on the courage, tenacity, and risk required to blaze a path toward justice in the era of Dr. King. I found myself asking a quieter but no less urgent question: What is needed now to continue paving that path or perhaps new ones?
Jewish wisdom teaches that all traits, good or bad, are strengthened through repetition. Just as a craftsman becomes skilled through practice, so does the soul. Judaism consistently treats the soul as educable, and our midpoint (values or character traits) as habits formed through action.
This idea is illuminated in the value of Orchot Tzaddikim (Paths of the Righteous), and later echoed by Rabbi Israel Salanter, founder of the Mussar Movement, who taught: “Just as one trains the hand to write, one must also train the heart to feel.”
Rabbi Salanter (1810–1883), born in present-day Lithuania, lived during a time of great upheaval for Jewish life in Eastern Europe. He believed that Torah scholarship without ethical refinement was incomplete and even dangerous. The Mussar Movement he founded emphasized systematic character development, daily repetition of ethical teachings, deep emotional commitment, and constant self-examination. Mussar was not intended simply to inform the mind, but to change behavior.
Later that day, as I prepared for a Shine a Light Shabbat at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Old Town, I began to imagine what it would be like to sit at a Shabbat table with Rabbi Salanter and Dr. King.
I imagine the conversation might have gone something like this:
Me: “It’s an incredible honor to have you both here. Times have been tough. Our community wants to do the right thing, but knowing the right thing and living it feels so far away.”
Rabbi Israel Salanter: “They are very far apart. The distance between the mind and the heart is greater than the distance between heaven and earth. That is why good intentions are not enough.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “I understand that distance. I have seen people speak beautifully about justice and then falter when the cost becomes personal. Without preparation, conviction weakens under pressure.”
Rabbi Salanter: “The heart does not follow the mind on its own. It must be guided there slowly, through repeated acts. Otherwise, passion becomes fragile.”
Me: “So when we fail, it’s not always because we don’t care enough?”
Dr. King: “Often it is because we have not practiced enough. Untrained love collapses when it meets fear.”
Rabbi Salanter: “The soul must be exercised before it is tested. If we wait for the moment of crisis to learn to control ourselves, we have already waited too long.”
Me: “That’s hard to hear. Our community wants change now.”
Dr. King: “The urgency is real. But if we rush through training, we create movements that exhaust themselves.”
Rabbi Salanter: “The path of the righteous is not dramatic. It is built quietly, returning again and again to the work of refining the heart.”
As the Shabbat candles burn down less and less, I ask one last question.
Me: “So this table is not where the work ends.”
Rabbi Salanter: “No. It is where the work is practiced.”
Dr. King: “And practice does not guarantee success, but it makes faithfulness possible.”
Me: “Then maybe hope isn’t a certainty at all.”
Rabbi Salanter: “Hope is the willingness to continue training the heart, even when the distance seems enormous.”
Dr. King: “And to believe that small, repeated acts of courage and care, shared in community, can still tip us, slowly, toward justice.”
On Monday, the JCC will be closed in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We are giving our professional team the space to step away from the daily grind and spend a full day training their hearts and minds, so we can continue to help pave the way to a more just world.
I hope you take the time to do the same.
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Betzy Lynch is the executive director of the Lawrence Family JCC
