Milton Grafman
Encyclopedia
Milton Louis Grafman an American rabbi
who led Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama
from 1941 until his retirement in 1975; he then served as Rabbi Emeritus from 1975 until his death in 1995. He was one of eight ministerial signers of a public statement to which Martin Luther King, Jr.
responded in his Letter from Birmingham Jail
.
where he studied at the public schools and at the University of Pittsburgh
. He entered the University of Cincinnati
in 1926 and earned his Bachelor of Arts. From there he went on to Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College
where he was ordained as a rabbi in 1933. In 1958 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion.
from 1933 until 1941. After that, Grafman arrived to take up the pulpit at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama
on December 7, 1941.
His extensive personal Judaic book collection was presented after his death to Alabama's Birmingham Southern College.
, National States Rights Party and White Citizens Councils.
On January 18, 1963 within a matter of days of Governor Wallace’s “Segregation Forever” gubernatorial inaugural address on the steps of the Alabama Capital in Montgomery, these ministers issued a joint statement “Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense” in which they warned that “inflammatory and rebellious statements can lead only to violence, discord, confusion and disgrace….” They also stated in language extraordinary for Birmingham in 1963 “[t]hat every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges and responsibilities which belong to humanity.”
Three months later in the lead up to Dr. King’s planned massive April demonstrations in Birmingham, various of these ministers, including Rabbi Grafman, issued a second statement on April 12, 1963 sometimes referred to as a “Call for Unity” reaffirming the January statement in the very first sentence of their April statement as prologue to this second statement. In this second statement the ministers expressed their view that the planned demonstrations at that time were “unwise and untimely” given the significant progress being made in Birmingham. Eugene “Bull” Connor by then had been voted out of office, albeit his unsuccessful appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court was then pending. (The court ruled against Connor on May 23, 1963—only 41 days after the ministers’ April statement.)
The ministers were not alone in their publicly stated views. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy spoke to the same rationale as did the Reverend Billy Graham, and many newspapers throughout the country including the Washington Post.
Responding to the minister’s April 12, 1963 statement, Dr. King penned his now revered “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while incarcerated during the ongoing Birmingham demonstrations. The Letter read as a stinging personal rebuff to the ministers. Although addressed to them, it was never sent to any of them as it was intended for a much broader audience. The Letter was embraced by civil rights advocates throughout the country, and quickly become perhaps the most articulate and moving document of the civil rights years.
The ministers as the named addresses were seen by readers of the Letter, and by those who thereafter read and studied it over the years, as obstructionist and/or worse—men who despite their religious callings were perceived to lack support for a brotherhood of mankind. This perception was compounded by the fact the Letter failed to mention their minister’s January statement, and was silent as to the Attorney General, Reverend Graham, and others who spoke to the same view point they did. The Letter even criticized the ministers and others for not speaking out against Governor Wallace—an assertion as to the minister that was incorrect as seen in their January statement.
As the Letter gained increasing, and then overwhelming approval, Rabbi Grafman was criticized even within the Jewish community by those who garnered their information solely from within the four corners of the Letter. Such criticism continued with some frequency throughout the remaining thirty-two years of Rabbi Grafman’s life.
The critics did not appreciate and/or apparently lacked knowledge of Rabbi Grafman’s role before and after the Letter, or his record of working toward racial harmony in opposition to those who advocated hatred and bigotry toward African Americans, and in response to rampant anti-Semitism as well.
Examples:
(1) In 1955, Rabbi Grafman refused to speak at a religious emphasis week at the University of Mississippi after the Mississippi state legislature revoked an invitation to another minister (who Rabbi Grafman did not know and never met) because of favorable comments of that minister respecting the NAACP.
(2) In 1961 the Rabbi spoke out publicly on television and otherwise in opposition to the City’s decision to close all the public parks, golf courses, and swimming pools rather than integrate them.
(3) Urged his Temple Emanu El congregation not to give in to fear in a city suffering from “moral apathy.” Stating at religious services on Friday evening September 13, 1963 (two days before the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing):
"You cannot yield to terror and violence….If you yield once and you yield a second time [and] you yield a third time. And then there is nothing more to yield…you have already been captured."
(4) The depth of his feelings was expressed in the Kadish (the Jewish prayer for the deceased) which Rabbi Grafman recited in prayer at Rosh Hashanah services (Jewish New Year) two days after the bombing:
"Let us bow our heads in silence. In memory of Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, James Robinson, Virgil Ware wantonly killed, insanely slain, brutally murdered, whose deaths we mourn, whose families we would comfort and the shame of whose murders we would and we must have our city [Birmingham] atone."
On September 23, 1963, less than a week after the church bombing, Rabbi Grafman and other Birmingham ministers met at the White House with President John F. Kennedy to discuss the extremely troubled situation in Birmingham. At this meeting, Rabbi Grafman asked the President if black FBI agents could be assigned to Birmingham.
Subsequent to the installation of the new city government (with Bull Connor now legally ousted), Rabbi Grafman was appointed to the first bi-racial committee in Birmingham working to smooth the way for integration in Birmingham.
Several years latter Rabbi Grafman played an instrumental role in the decision of the overwhelmingly non-Jewish Birmingham Ministerial Association’s to afford membership eligibility to all ministers in the city. A resolution was pending to integrate the Association to which there was some opposition. As recalled by the Association’s president, Rabbi Grafman stated during this meeting:
"How many of you have read that series of little books called the New Testament? I have. How many of you ever walked in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? I have. When you read those books and when you walk in His path, you will have your answer."
The resolution passed unanimously. Subsequently, Rabbi Grafman became the first and only Rabbi ever elected to the presidency of the Birmingham Ministerial Association.
When the First Baptist Church of Birmingham split over whether to integrate, the breakaway group formed the Baptist Church of the Covenant committed to an integrated church for all people. Pending the establishment of their own church facility, Rabbi Grafman offered his congregation’s synagogue for the newly formed church worship services. This offer was graciously accepted and the church members thereafter held their services at Temple Emanu El for some time until their own church edifice was constructed.
Rabbi Grafman’s role during the civil rights period in Birmingham perhaps is best summed up by Richard Arrington, Birmingham’s first black mayor who stated:
"[Rabbi Grafman] has a high level of credibility among all segments of the community, black as well as whites. He has a long record of working to bring about change and a reputation for being concerned about justice."
At Rabbi Grafman’s funeral in May 1995, Ozell Billingsley, an African American attorney and civil rights activist involved in securing Dr. King’s release from the Birmingham Jail, attended and then returned to the Grafman home to pay his personal respects to the family.
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
who led Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
from 1941 until his retirement in 1975; he then served as Rabbi Emeritus from 1975 until his death in 1995. He was one of eight ministerial signers of a public statement to which Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
responded in his Letter from Birmingham Jail
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail or Letter from Birmingham City Jail, also known as The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr., an American civil rights leader...
.
Education
Born in Washington D. C., Grafman spent his boyhood in Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
where he studied at the public schools and at the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
. He entered the University of Cincinnati
University of Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati is a comprehensive public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a part of the University System of Ohio....
in 1926 and earned his Bachelor of Arts. From there he went on to Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College
Hebrew Union College
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism.HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem.The Jerusalem...
where he was ordained as a rabbi in 1933. In 1958 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion.
Work
Rabbi Milton L. Grafman served for a congregation/The Temple Adath Israel in Lexington, KentuckyLexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
from 1933 until 1941. After that, Grafman arrived to take up the pulpit at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
on December 7, 1941.
Legacy
Grafman was one of the founders of Spastic Aid of Alabama, later United Cerebral Palsy, serving as its first president. He established the Institute for Christian Clergy in Birmingham—an annual gathering that promoted the understanding and cooperation of Jewish and Christian ministers.His extensive personal Judaic book collection was presented after his death to Alabama's Birmingham Southern College.
Civil Rights Years
In 1963 during Grafman’s tenure as the rabbi of Birmingham’s Temple Emanu El, he joined with a group of other prominent Alabama clergymen to address the then turbulent civil rights movement in Alabama’s largest city. Birmingham at the time was described by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as perhaps the most segregated city in the United States—a city where racial intolerance and anti-Semitism were rampant with an active Ku Klux KlanKu Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, National States Rights Party and White Citizens Councils.
On January 18, 1963 within a matter of days of Governor Wallace’s “Segregation Forever” gubernatorial inaugural address on the steps of the Alabama Capital in Montgomery, these ministers issued a joint statement “Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense” in which they warned that “inflammatory and rebellious statements can lead only to violence, discord, confusion and disgrace….” They also stated in language extraordinary for Birmingham in 1963 “[t]hat every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges and responsibilities which belong to humanity.”
Three months later in the lead up to Dr. King’s planned massive April demonstrations in Birmingham, various of these ministers, including Rabbi Grafman, issued a second statement on April 12, 1963 sometimes referred to as a “Call for Unity” reaffirming the January statement in the very first sentence of their April statement as prologue to this second statement. In this second statement the ministers expressed their view that the planned demonstrations at that time were “unwise and untimely” given the significant progress being made in Birmingham. Eugene “Bull” Connor by then had been voted out of office, albeit his unsuccessful appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court was then pending. (The court ruled against Connor on May 23, 1963—only 41 days after the ministers’ April statement.)
The ministers were not alone in their publicly stated views. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy spoke to the same rationale as did the Reverend Billy Graham, and many newspapers throughout the country including the Washington Post.
Responding to the minister’s April 12, 1963 statement, Dr. King penned his now revered “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while incarcerated during the ongoing Birmingham demonstrations. The Letter read as a stinging personal rebuff to the ministers. Although addressed to them, it was never sent to any of them as it was intended for a much broader audience. The Letter was embraced by civil rights advocates throughout the country, and quickly become perhaps the most articulate and moving document of the civil rights years.
The ministers as the named addresses were seen by readers of the Letter, and by those who thereafter read and studied it over the years, as obstructionist and/or worse—men who despite their religious callings were perceived to lack support for a brotherhood of mankind. This perception was compounded by the fact the Letter failed to mention their minister’s January statement, and was silent as to the Attorney General, Reverend Graham, and others who spoke to the same view point they did. The Letter even criticized the ministers and others for not speaking out against Governor Wallace—an assertion as to the minister that was incorrect as seen in their January statement.
As the Letter gained increasing, and then overwhelming approval, Rabbi Grafman was criticized even within the Jewish community by those who garnered their information solely from within the four corners of the Letter. Such criticism continued with some frequency throughout the remaining thirty-two years of Rabbi Grafman’s life.
The critics did not appreciate and/or apparently lacked knowledge of Rabbi Grafman’s role before and after the Letter, or his record of working toward racial harmony in opposition to those who advocated hatred and bigotry toward African Americans, and in response to rampant anti-Semitism as well.
Examples:
(1) In 1955, Rabbi Grafman refused to speak at a religious emphasis week at the University of Mississippi after the Mississippi state legislature revoked an invitation to another minister (who Rabbi Grafman did not know and never met) because of favorable comments of that minister respecting the NAACP.
(2) In 1961 the Rabbi spoke out publicly on television and otherwise in opposition to the City’s decision to close all the public parks, golf courses, and swimming pools rather than integrate them.
(3) Urged his Temple Emanu El congregation not to give in to fear in a city suffering from “moral apathy.” Stating at religious services on Friday evening September 13, 1963 (two days before the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing):
"You cannot yield to terror and violence….If you yield once and you yield a second time [and] you yield a third time. And then there is nothing more to yield…you have already been captured."
(4) The depth of his feelings was expressed in the Kadish (the Jewish prayer for the deceased) which Rabbi Grafman recited in prayer at Rosh Hashanah services (Jewish New Year) two days after the bombing:
"Let us bow our heads in silence. In memory of Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, James Robinson, Virgil Ware wantonly killed, insanely slain, brutally murdered, whose deaths we mourn, whose families we would comfort and the shame of whose murders we would and we must have our city [Birmingham] atone."
On September 23, 1963, less than a week after the church bombing, Rabbi Grafman and other Birmingham ministers met at the White House with President John F. Kennedy to discuss the extremely troubled situation in Birmingham. At this meeting, Rabbi Grafman asked the President if black FBI agents could be assigned to Birmingham.
Subsequent to the installation of the new city government (with Bull Connor now legally ousted), Rabbi Grafman was appointed to the first bi-racial committee in Birmingham working to smooth the way for integration in Birmingham.
Several years latter Rabbi Grafman played an instrumental role in the decision of the overwhelmingly non-Jewish Birmingham Ministerial Association’s to afford membership eligibility to all ministers in the city. A resolution was pending to integrate the Association to which there was some opposition. As recalled by the Association’s president, Rabbi Grafman stated during this meeting:
"How many of you have read that series of little books called the New Testament? I have. How many of you ever walked in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? I have. When you read those books and when you walk in His path, you will have your answer."
The resolution passed unanimously. Subsequently, Rabbi Grafman became the first and only Rabbi ever elected to the presidency of the Birmingham Ministerial Association.
When the First Baptist Church of Birmingham split over whether to integrate, the breakaway group formed the Baptist Church of the Covenant committed to an integrated church for all people. Pending the establishment of their own church facility, Rabbi Grafman offered his congregation’s synagogue for the newly formed church worship services. This offer was graciously accepted and the church members thereafter held their services at Temple Emanu El for some time until their own church edifice was constructed.
Rabbi Grafman’s role during the civil rights period in Birmingham perhaps is best summed up by Richard Arrington, Birmingham’s first black mayor who stated:
"[Rabbi Grafman] has a high level of credibility among all segments of the community, black as well as whites. He has a long record of working to bring about change and a reputation for being concerned about justice."
At Rabbi Grafman’s funeral in May 1995, Ozell Billingsley, an African American attorney and civil rights activist involved in securing Dr. King’s release from the Birmingham Jail, attended and then returned to the Grafman home to pay his personal respects to the family.