The Maggid of Dubnov told a story* about a king who owned the most beautiful diamond
in the world. Every night the king carefully took the gem from its storage case to gaze
at it lovingly. But one night, disaster struck: the diamond slipped from his hands and
fell to the floor. The king picked it up quickly. But when he examined the stone, he saw
right away that there was now a thin crack running down its length. His diamond was
ruined.
In a panic, the king called every jeweler in his realm. But each expert responded that
once there's a crack in a diamond, there's no way to fix it. The desperate king sent out
word that anyone who could repair his broken diamond would be richly rewarded. A few
days later, a jeweler from a distant province arrived at the palace. After examining the
diamond, he promised the king he would fix everything, not to worry. He took the
diamond and promised to return with it in a few months.
The despondent king couldn't wait to see his diamond as good as new. When the day
arrived, the jeweler presented a beautiful box. The king shook with excitement and
opened it quickly. But when the king looked inside, his face turned red and he shook
with fury. The same thin crack still ran down the center of his precious diamond. "What
have you done?" he screamed. "You promised you would fix it!”
"Please, your majesty, wait!" said the old man. "Just turn the stone over." And when
the king did so, he saw the jeweler had carved the petals of a flower at the top of the
diamond. So now the crack running through the stone appeared to be the stem of a
flower, and the diamond was more beautiful than ever.
The irony of telling a story about a king on a night about democracy is not lost on me. And yet, it is important to know that in hasidic story telling, parables about kings are usually lessons about God. In this case, many things can be compared to God’s precious gem, but tonight, it feels democracy is the most fitting.
Consensus has it that American democracy is fractured. Bifurcated, more precisely, between left and right. Legislative chamber aisles are cavernous and while many pay lip service to “my friends across the aisle,” we know that words get lost in the cracks’ crevices, lost to the shadows of mistrust.
We know that fear, anxiety, and hate thrive in those shadows.
And yet the presence of a crack does not mean that the gem is irrevocably ruined. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. clarified: "Democracy is not a fragile thing, it is not a weak thing…It is a precious thing."
Our US democracy is strong. Even with the attacks and perversions, it prevails. But while not weak, it is precious. Precious things need to be guarded, tended, maintained through special attention. Otherwise they fall into disrepair, or are stolen. Our democracy, a precious thing, must be monitored and protected.
And…we must be careful. Sometimes precious things are made accessible only to a privileged few under the guise of protection. Whether through cronyism or restricting voting rights, or in the spread of misinformation or limiting of the press; whether through elitism and buying access, or in scapegoating and vilification, we see our precious democracy cracking before us. Every American, under every administration, is obligated to catch the crack, and instead of rending it further apart, find a way to shape it back to beauty.
At his speech at the March on Washington in 1963, Dr. King reminded us that "the great problem facing our nation is not just the past, but the future.” “How will we meet the challenges ahead,” he asked. “It’s not enough to just love democracy in theory,” he replied, “we must live it every day." This means lifting up the voices of the oppressed and asking which voices are still missing. Democracy thrives on multivocality and a determined assertion that every living soul matters equally.
To live by King’s words, protecting our democracy, does not mean watering down our convictions or softening our values. No, in fact we heed his words when we hone and refine them. We apply them creatively as tools of democratic artistry. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963), King wrote: "The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?"
What would it look like to be extremist for love? I imagine it is about love through action, committing ourselves to our fellow humans; creating a ripple effect of positivity that begins in our own hearts and extends out to others, even when challenged.
The Maggid of Dubrov, like MLK, embodied this courage to dream and persevere. The Maggid famously shared, "When a person is in trouble and turns to God, they should not ask to be saved from their problems, but rather to be given the strength to endure and to learn from the experience." May we have the strength to endure and grow in the adversity we see and the adversity inevitably to come. May we be artisans of justice and believers in democratic beauty.
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