Mosque hosts Religious Council’s MLK service

The Valley Stream Religious Council celebrated its MLK Day event at the mosque in Valley Stream.

Micah Danney/Herald

Zaid Kapadia, 12, at left, recited a verse from the Quran.

Micah Danney/Herald

Mayor Ed Fare, left, shared a laugh about his lack of prepared remarks after he learned he was to speak.

Micah Danney/Herald

Speakers addressed a packed house at the Sunday evening service.

Micah Danney/Herald

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Churchgoers, synagogue members, Baha’i adherents, mosque parishioners and other locals gathered at Masjid Hamza Islamic Center of South Shore in North Valley Stream on Sunday to honor and reflect on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mayor Ed Fare quoted remarks made by President Ronald Reagan in the White House’s rose garden in 1983: “Traces of bigotry still mar America, so each year on Martin Luther King Day, let us not only recall Dr. King, but rededicate ourselves to the commandments that Dr. King believed in and sought to live by every day: Thou shall love thy God with all thy heart and thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. And I just have to believe that all of us, and in all of us — young and old, Republicans and Democrats — we can all live up to those commandments, and we will see the day when Dr. King’s dreams come true, and in Dr. King’s words, ‘All of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From every mountainside, Let freedom ring.’”

Speakers from religious institutions around the village that comprise the Valley Stream Religious Council, which organized the event, took to the podium to share their faiths’ common goals and perspectives on humanity and its place in the universe.

Rabbi Yechiel Buchband, of the Valley Stream Jewish Center, addressed the audience and sang a Jewish liturgical blessing. His singing’s tone and inflection was similar to that of Zaid Kapadia, 12, of Valley Stream, who recited a verse from the Quran.

Rabbi Steven Graber, of Temple Hillel, spoke about Judaism’s oral tradition. “In the Mishnah, our oral Torah, our sages explain that the Holy One created a single being, Adam, to teach that every life is so valuable that if one takes a single life, it is as if one destroys all humanity, and if one saves a single life, it is as if one saves all humanity.”

A screen displayed a video of King’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, in 1964. As the service drew to a close, participants joined hands and sang “We Shall Overcome.”