NEW YORK — In May of 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., ascended to the stage of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City to deliver one of his speeches called “The Future of Integration.”

“We have come a long, long way in the struggle for racial justice, but we have a long, long way to go before the problem is solved,” the speech says.

Later this month, the synagogue will celebrate Black-Jewish cooperation in that long struggle with a concert for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day focused on ties between the two communities. The show comes as the conflict in the Middle East has shifted the relationship between the two groups.

“What we’re shooting for here is to remind people of our shared history,” said Daniel Singer, the synagogue’s cantor. “When we sing together, we feel that music transcends all of these divisions, and that’s what we want to accomplish.”

The January 19 show, called “Soul to Soul,” is a production of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, a Yiddish theater company. The show includes songs in English and Yiddish by Black and Jewish performers, accompanied by imagery and video of historic civil rights speeches and marches, and audio from speeches by King and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, his associate in the civil rights struggle.

Performers include singer Lisa Fishman, Cantor Magda Fishman, musician Yoshie Fruchter, and Broadway performers Elmore James and Sam McKelton. Zalmen Mlotek of the Yiddish theater is the artistic director.

The genesis for the program came around the year 2000. James said he was listening to Paul Robeson, a Black performer and political activist who learned some Yiddish and performed in the language.

“He was singing a Yiddish song and I didn’t know what he was singing but I loved the song,” James said. On a whim, he stopped in a Judaica store he happened to walk past and asked if someone there could help him learn the song. A man in the store pointed him to the Yiddish theater, where he connected with Mlotek.

“Zalmen was very excited that someone who wasn’t Jewish wanted to learn Yiddish songs,” James said. Mlotek taught James some of the Yiddish songs Robeson performed, and James, a classical singer who performs in nine languages, picked up the........

© The Times of Israel