A rabbi walks for justice

Spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El takes part in NAACP’s civil rights march

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As he walked 13 miles through the scorching heat and humidity on a 95-degree August day in Columbia, S.C., side by side with leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other clergy from across the country, Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum couldn’t help but think of the progress he made with each step of his journey as a metaphor for the nation’s struggle to provide equal rights for all its citizens.

The 35-year-old spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El, a reform congregation in East Meadow, took part in the 25th day of a planned 45-day march by the NAACP — that is still in progress — from Selma, Ala., to Washington, D.C., called America’s Journey For Justice, an event the organization said is the longest advocacy march in history, and is aimed at mobilizing activists and advancing a national agenda to protect the civil rights of all Americans.

The march began at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Aug. 1, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other advocates of the American civil rights movement famously marched 50 years ago in support of the Voting Rights Act. The march will end later this month with a rally in Washington.

While the U.S. has seen significant cultural changes in the past five decades, mostly for the better, recent incidents, most notably in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Bar-Nahum said, showed there is still very much a perception that not all Americans are being treated equally under the law. The march united people of different cultures, faiths and skin colors in recognition of that, he said, and it was their solidarity and purpose that kept him going in the withering heat.

“The steps and the miles that we walked were difficult,” said Bar-Nahum, who marched on Aug. 25, as the event neared the 500th mile. “But then you turn around and you see how much distance you’ve covered, and add that to the day before and the day before, you realize the progress we make is more powerful than the difficulty of the walking.

“It’s important for us to recognize that progress is slow,” he continued. “But the slowness of progress when we’re talking about a nation shouldn’t distract us from the necessity for it.”

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