FJC marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with a potluck dinner and the film

Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silent

Friday, January 16 following an abbreviated 6:00 P.M. Service and Potluck Dinner

6:00 P.M. Service / approx. 6:45 P.M. Dinner / 7:30 P.M. Film screening

Free and open to the public

Minutes before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to the multitudes gathered at the March on Washington, Joachim Prinz, a Newark rabbi took his turn at the podium. The words that Rabbi Prinz spoke that August day in 1963 eloquently connected his experience in Nazi Germany to his commitment to battling racism in America. Prinz, born in Germany, 1902, was a prominent and dynamic rabbi in Berlin who spoke out publicly and fearlessly against the Nazis, urging Jews to leave Germany. He was arrested several times before being expelled in 1937.
“He was to us, what nowadays would be a rock star,” says a woman interviewed in the film who knew Prinz in 1933. “When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things,” he declared. “The most important thing that I learned under those most tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.”

Prinz, who died in 1988, lived an epic life that bore witness to both the cataclysm of the Holocaust and the inspirational triumph of the civil rights Movement. Now the grand sweep of his life has been captured in a documentary produced and directed by Rachel Pasternak and Rachel Fisher.

Come learn more about this major figure in American Jewish history and the Civil Rights movement. Invite your friends to dinner and the film (and the service). All are free and open to the public.

No pork or shellfish please, in keeping with FJC's dietary regulations.