Rabbi Heschel with white beard, two to Dr. King’s left.
Just up Broad Street, half a mile from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is the empty Temple Mishkan Israel, a remnant of a formerly thriving Jewish community in Selma that has dwindled in recent decades.
While their structures are all but abandoned, many there recall the actions and importance of Jews in the Civil Rights movement, whose own lives and synagogues were in jeopardy across the south. When Dr. King came to Selma after Bloody Sunday, sixteen rabbis joined him, with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the lead cohort walking arm in arm with John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
