What a year it has been
Last night was graduation day from Cultural Leadership, and what a year it has been. I have been changed by this program in so many ways. The past year has opened my eyes even more to the struggles of blacks in history and in present. Jewish struggles are different the black struggles but they are very similar and the two groups will always be tied together. No matter how bad they have been, an unbreakable bond has been formed. From the earliest years of the 20th, when Jews and Blacks created the NAACP and Urban league to Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald working together to create 5000 schools in the south for blacks, at one point educating 40% of the Southern black population. Our bond was permanently formed by the work of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner. They died together believing in a cause and if the bond fails, they died for nothing.
I have learned so much and now I realize that it is up to me to pass on the knowledge that the books pass over. I wish everybody could have this experience because racism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination would find no home. I doubt that we will see the end of these problems in our lifetime, but one day people will, as MLK said, "not judge by the color of [my] skin, but by the content of [my] character. It is up to us to carry on his and so many other legends of the Civil Rights era, work; because we came so far, but yet we still have a long way to go. We too are ordinary people capable of doing extraordinary things.