http://blogs.jta.org/ENTRY_PERMALINK_HERE/mlk-day-and-the-jews/ It’s been said that with all the hoopla in the Jewish world surrounding Martin Luther King day, it sometimes seems that the holiday has more resonance in the Jewish community than in the African-American one. With all the materials flooding in here in recent days, there’s little reason to think this year will be any different. Here’s a sampling. Marc Schneier, the New York rabbi whose Foundation For Ethnic Understanding does a lot of interfaith work with African Americans (music mogul Russell Simmons is Schneier’s partner in the organization), has a whole series of events this week and next with black leaders, including Martin Luther King III, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. On Saturday, Schneier will welcome an African-American gospel choir to his congregation, the New York Synagogue. At the Jewish Theological Seminary, where King was an honorary alumnus, a Web page has been set up to showcase several goodies culled from the school’s archives. There’s the iconic photo of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with MLK, and a radio interview with the seminary chancellor, Arnold Eisen, discussing Heschel. But really worth checking out is the speech of former JTS Chancellor Louis Finkelstein on NBC television from April 7, 1968. With just days before the inaguration of the country’s first black president, a president who invites us to think of him in a Lincolnesque mold, this passage is particularly poignant: en-us bharris@jta.org Copyright 2009 2009-01-16T;16:11:00-05:00