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, alongside 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 delivered in 1963 at the March on Washington, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the address, Dr. King names specific places where the struggle for civil and human rights was, and remains, most fiercely contested: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi.
Each time Mississippi was spoken aloud by Rhys Green, the remarkable actor delivering the reading, my heart felt heavier. His interpretation transported me to that historic moment in August 1963, but my thoughts also leapt forward to January 10, 2026, when an intentionally set fire nearly burned one of the only synagogues in Mississippi to the ground.
How far we have come. And how far we still have to go.
As I left the breakfast, I spent much of the day reflecting on the courage, tenacity, and risk required to carve a path toward justice in Dr. King’s era. I found myself asking a quieter but no less urgent question: What will it take 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 craftsperson becomes skilled through practice, so too does the soul. Judaism consistently treats the soul as educable, and our middot (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, so must one 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 engagement, and consistent self-examination. Mussar was not meant to merely inform the mind, but to change behavior.
Later that day, as I was setting up for a Shine a Light Shabbat at Immaculate Conception Church in Old Town, I began to imagine what it might 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 both of you here. Times have been hard. Our community wants to do what is right but knowing the right thing and living it feel very far apart.”
Rabbi Israel Salanter: “They are 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’ve watched people speak beautifully about justice, 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 turns brittle.”
Me: “So when we fail, it isn’t always because we don’t care enough?”
Dr. King: “Often it’s because we haven’t practiced enough. Love that isn’t trained 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 restraint, we have already waited too long.”
Me: “That’s hard to hear. Our community wants change now.”
Dr. King: “Urgency is real. But if we rush past formation, we create movements that exhaust themselves.”
Rabbi Salanter: “The path of the righteous is not dramatic. It is built quietly, by returning again and again to the work of refining the heart.”
As the Shabbat candles burn lower, I ask one final question.
Me: “So this table is not where the work is finished.”
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 certainty at all.”
Rabbi Salanter: “Hope is the willingness to keep training the heart, even when the distance feels vast.”
Dr. King: “And to believe that small, repeated acts of courage and care, shared in community, can still bend 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 daily work and spend a full day training their hearts and minds, so we can continue to help pave the path toward a more righteous world.
I am hoping that you might take the time to do the same.
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Betzy Lynch is the CEO of the Lawrence Family JCC