King came to Temple Sha’arey Shalom in Springfield on Jan. 18, 1963, at the invitation of Rabbi Israel C. Dresner; Howard Kiesel was the synagogue’s vice president at the time.

The two men meet at Pal’s Cabin every month to keep in touch. Last week they invited NJ Jewish News to join them as they recalled the circumstances and reaction to the civil rights leader’s appearance.

Dresner, 77, was a member of the first interfaith and interracial clergymen’s Freedom Ride in the South. He described himself as “the first and most arrested rabbi during the civil rights struggle,” imprisoned four times for participating in nonviolent protests.

He first met King in Albany, Ga., in 1962, arriving in town shortly after King had been arrested along with several supporters.

“We shook hands through the bars,” said Dresner, rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth Tikvah in Wayne. “Just as we began to talk, Dr. King said, ‘Just wait a few seconds,’ and he tapped on the wall going into the [adjacent] cell, and they started singing very loudly, and then Dr. King said, ‘I don’t want anyone to hear our conversation.’”

The two clergymen developed a relationship of mutual respect and admiration, and Dresner invited King to visit Sha’arey Shalom to spread his message.

The Jan. 18, 1963 issue of The Jewish News, as NJJN was then called, announced King’s appearance that evening, describing him as an “anti-segregationist leader” who would speak on The Religious Roots of the Movement to Win Negro Freedom in America.

King’s appearance was finalized only days before the visit, said Kiesel, 78. In a time before e-mail, phone calls were made to alert the congregation to their special guest. The synagogue, Dresner and Kiesel said, was packed to overflowing — more than 300 people. Audio speakers were set up for congregants and visitors — including some from nearby Temple Beth Ahm and a local Baptist church — who couldn’t fit into the main sanctuary.

Following the talk, Dresner, Kiesel, and a small group of synagogue leaders met with King at a congregant’s home for a brief fund-raiser for King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“If you ask me what I spoke to him about, I could never tell you,” said Kiesel. “Just the experience was so exciting that I can’t remember what we spoke about.”

“A good many of the people who were present that evening were [civil rights] supporters,” he said. “You have to consider that our congregation — as opposed to many other congregations who had very little understanding or awareness of what was going on — were very much aware of the civil rights movement because of Rabbi Dresner’s activities.

“You’ve got to understand that there were a lot of people in the congregation, particularly way back then, who were uncomfortable with the idea of their rabbi getting involved in anything that was not Jewish,” Kiesel said. “I wouldn’t say they were bigoted, but they wanted their rabbi to be where they could touch him,” not down South getting arrested.

Dresner’s activities were indeed a source of some internal political turmoil at the synagogue. A group within the congregation didn’t object to his activities on a personal level, but preferred that he omit his synagogue affiliation when identifying himself during those actions, said Kiesel. One member came to a temple meeting and threatened to have Kiesel recalled as vice president and the social action committee disbanded and replaced by a new committee that would be “more representative of the congregation’s feelings,” he said. The tumult eventually died out.

Dresner said it is evident that King’s legacy has borne fruit, citing the current number of African-American members of Congress to prove his point. In King’s era, only two members of Congress were black; today there are 42. Progress has been made, but “obviously we have to go a lot farther.” Hundreds of years of bigotry cannot be eradicated in a few decades, he said.

“Has the tree grown tall and the roots spread out and now we no longer have a problem?” asked Kiesel. “Obviously the answer is no. We still have a huge problem.”

He spoke of a recent dinner he had at Pal’s Cabin with friends who expressed what he considered politically incorrect comments on race. He was shocked when he realized the extent of the bigotry that still exists. “My wife and I left here that night and I said, ‘Can you believe in this day and age that there are people who…still think this way?’ So it’s still there. And that’s here in New Jersey. Can you imagine what it is [elsewhere]?”

Kiesel sighed when he said, “My guess is that [King’s] message has not resounded.”

Dresner was a bit more optimistic. “Is anti-Semitism less today than it was in the ’60s? Of course it is. But is there still anti-Semitism? Of course there is…. The ADL and the NAACP are not going out of business.

“We should see the half of the glass that is filled, but not ignore the half that is empty,” Dresner said. “The struggle for justice never ends…. As the Torah says, ‘Justice, justice shall you pursue.’”