We all affect each other. That goes without saying. A question that came to me as I listened to the sermon of High holiday services was how much do we affect each other.
I was listening to arguably one of the most influential men of the civil rights movement and undoubtedly the most powerful Jew of the civil rights movement; Rabbi Robert Marx. Watch a short documentary of him here.
Besides having been a collaborator of many chicago marches, Marx was a friend of Martin Luther King. A man who undoubtedly had a huge affect on every American's life.
Rabbi Marx, the founder of my congregation, has a rather famous story about his involvement in the march on Washington. He was invited to stand next to King at the speech, and that was his plan until about five minutes before he arrived. On the walk between his hotel and the mall, he saw a man crying on the street. Marx asked him what the problem was. The man responded that he had lost all of his money, his family and his friends. He lamented that there was nothing left to live for.
Marx treated the man to breakfast as they listened to the I Have A Dream Speech speech on the radio.
I'm willing to bet that Rabbi Marx had a greater affect on this one man than he would have had o anyone had he been on the stage that day. This brings me to my point, everyone always says that everyone can make a difference. If this is true, why don't we all. Surely the Martin Luther King's are important, but I would choose a good friend over a great man any day.
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Wow Sam, Mr. Marx sounds like a really incredible, and is a great example of the massive effect we can have on people. The fact he took the time to buy that man breakfast is absolutely amazing, it must have completely changed the crying man's look on things. I can only imagine it doing so, because one minute he's on the street thinking he's alone and has nothing, and the next minute some random stranger is showing him the goodness in the world regardless.
ReplyDeleteIn EH freshman year, my class read two really excellent stories kind of about this topic. One was about a woman who had a a somewhat dull job at a train station, who made fun of a person legitimately trying to figure out a train route in a noisy train station for continuing to ask 'huh?' over and over again with her every response as if he were stupid, and she eventually closes the window from her box office to the outside and mocks the man as he tries to communicate, until he leaves. In the end, it turns out the man is hard of hearing and on his way to visit his dying relative, and the ticket-seller's treatment of him threw off his entire day. I don't recall the story perfectly, but it severely hindered his ability to see and bring relief to his extremely ill relative, and they may have died, causing him to write a letter to the train station. I just ruined this story for you if you ever come across it, but reading it really just highlighted something true that I didn't appreciate a whole lot at the time. When you're in a really bad mood, it's extremely difficult to see things in perspective and not take out your frustrations on others, and those who recognize the massive difference they can make in people and actually act on it, such as Rabbi Marx, have a lot of power.