THE MOST ARRESTED RABBI
As we enter MLK weekend, the Jewish community has lost one of the great Jewish leaders of the Civil Rights Era. May his story be an inspiration this Shabbat.
Rabbi “Sy” Israel Dresner, known as “the most arrested Rabbi” in history, died this week at the age of 92. Rabbi Dresner was arrested multiple times during the Civil Rights Movement and several times afterward in other protests. In one of those arrests, he shared a cell with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Albany, GA, jail. They became close friends.
Sitting in that cell, Dr. King tapped on the prison wall. In the next cell, a group of African American college students heard that tap and knew what to do. They began singing protest songs and spirituals. Their voices drowned out Dr. King’s voice, allowing him to talk with Rabbi Dresner without the guards hearing. While the students sang, Dr. King asked Rabbi Dresner and a white minister to bring clergy down to the South to protest.
Rabbi Dresner and the minister arranged for 75 clergy members to come and march. Then, Rabbi Dresner brought 16 rabbis to St. Augustine, FL, to protest. All the rabbis were arrested. A Freedom Riders case brought against Rabbi Dresner went all the way to the Supreme Court.
In 1961, Rabbi Dresner helped coordinate the March on Washington. In 1965, Rabbi Dresner offered a prayer at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as part of the protest. All the while, Rabbi Dresner served a congregation in New Jersey. Overall, the synagogue members supported his protests. “They were very tolerant of my arrests, but when a rabbi gets arrested for the fourth summer in a row, you begin to think, ‘Is he a meshuganeh?’” says Dresner, using the Yiddishism for crazy person.
Rabbi Dresner grew up in a Yiddish speaking home on the Lower East Side. His family was progressive Labor Zionists. Tragically, they lost many members during the Holocaust. His family’s experiences during the Holocaust and the losses that they endured sparked Rabbi Dresner’s commitment to fighting for social justice.
He went onto fight for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. A lifelong supporter of Israel, Rabbi Dresner traveled to Israel 40 times and met with 9 Israeli Prime Ministers – and spoke out for the Israeli peace movement.
Rabbi Dresner attended his last protest on the day of Trump’s Inauguration. This past November, when he found out that his terminal cancer had progressed, Rabbi Dresner made a bucket list of things that he wanted to do – including going one more time to Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side and catching a Broadway show. (He saw the Book of Mormon.) And, he wanted to survive long enough to see the first anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection, so he leave this world with some confidence that American’s precious Democracy would survive.
Below: Telegram from MLK to Rabbi Dresner, who had been arrested and jailed.
