“Not Fade Away”
By Jonathan Dale Rapoport
19 September 2003
California Department of Forestry Butte Fire Academy
Oroville, California, The United States of America
I tried to think of what else to write about the assassination of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.
As I stated before, I really don’t know what to write.
In a world so filled with useless “leftists” and “radicals” grouped around the “Ramparts” rip-offs called Independent Media Centers who will never effect any change in this world because they don’t want to be part of what they call “the system,” Anna Lindh was a true humanitarian who worked within “the system” to try and make the world a better place.
As did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest humanitarian our world has ever seen.
His greatest speech ever, which he co-wrote with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was the “I Have a Dream Speech.”
On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on 28 August 1963 as he began to make the transition from outlining his political agenda into speaking about his dream, Dr. King said:
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”
Aside from the founding fathers, only Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan changed the United States of America more than Dr. King did.
Dr. King is the only person in American history who wielded a power that is normally reserved only for Presidents.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 completely changed the face of American society.
Blacks were able to rent a hotel room and eat a meal wherever they chose.
“Restricted areas” were erased from the map and Jews could suddenly vacation in Maine and Florida instead of being confined to resorts in the Katskills outside New York City.
Jewish doctors could practice in any hospital and Jewish patients could be admitted to any hospital and most of America’s separate Jewish hospitals have been since been closed down.
But Dr. King did more than just convince Congress to pass and President Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
He changed the way we think.
Forever.
His legacy lives on.
Well I browsed through my collections of the hundreds of speeches and addresses that Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel co-wrote and I found another excerpt from a speech that Dr. King delivered the night before he was assassinated.
I say that while we should mourn the loss of Anna Lindh, coming so soon after the loss of Sergio de Mello, we should be inspired by what Dr. King said the night before he was assassinated.
Dr. King said:
“And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, ‘Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?’
I would take my mental flight by Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the Promised Land.
And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. I would move on by Greece, and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire.
And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and esthetic life of man.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I'm named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church in Wittenberg.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating president by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
But I wouldn't stop there. I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
But I wouldn't stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, ‘If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.’
Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up.
The nation is sick.
Trouble is in the land.
Confusion all around.
That's a strange statement.
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.
And I see G-d working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.
The masses of people are rising up.
And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same — ‘We want to be free.’”
I am reminded of Chanukah 1995, the year that Jerry Garcia of the rock musical group “The Grateful Dead” passed away.
In Union Square in downtown San Francisco cute Jewish girls (redundant) handed out candles to thousands of us as the Rabbis from the Chabad House in Berkeley read Chanukah prayers and then dedicated the last night of Chanukah to Jerry Garcia.
As the Bill Graham Memorial Menorah was illuminated, a band sitting behind the Chabad Rabbis began to perform the rock music song “Not Fade Away,” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards:
“I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
I'm gonna love you night and day
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away
My love bigger than a Cadillac
I try to show it and you're drivin' me back
Your love for me has got to be real
For you to know just how I feel
Love is real and not fade away
Well love is real and not fade away
I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
Love to last more than one day
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away
Love, love is love and not fade away
Not fade away
Not fade away”
-30-
THE WORDS OF MICK JAGGER AND KEITH RICHARDS ARE CONTROLLED BY VIRGIN RECORDS, LTD. IN LONDON AS PRODUCER FOR THE ENGLISH ROCK MUSIC GROUP THE ROLLING STONES.
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