What Martin Luther King Jr. Had in Mind

By Daniel Marks Cohen

Pressing the insulation with my shoulder, I fumbled for my hammer while arranging a small metal disk designed to hold a construction nail in place. Looking for a spot positioned over mortar, not brick, I pounded the insulation into the wall.

So it went last month during Martin Luther King Build 2004, a weekend-long program organized by Habitat for Humanity to honor the memory of the Civil Rights leader. Hundreds of volunteers met with members of St. Philip's Church on West 134th Street in Harlem to receive instructions about how to reconstruct an abandoned shell of a home across the street into affordable housing. I was there with Hadar, a progressive minyan that meets on the Upper West Side. The organizer of our group was Rachel Wainer, a student at the Drisha Institute in Manhattan.

Working together with a dozen other religious, civic and political groups from across the city, we put aside our differences to concentrate on our common values. The Hadar group was working on the fifth floor, on the western side of an apartment. On the eastern side was Saad Ahmad, a member of the Muslim Student Association of NYU, and several of his fellow students. Upon learning that the two religious groups were sharing the floor, Saad broke into a broad smile: "I think that's great, Jews and Muslims working together for a greater cause, this is what King had in mind."

A few feet away, Ayesha Chaudhry and Khadijah James were cutting metal tracking to be used as bracing for drywall installation. Ayesha, wearing a headscarf and long skirt, observed, "As a North American Muslim woman, the more one volunteers, the less alien and alienated one feels, and unless we are willing to make our humanity the basis of our interaction, we cannot even conceive of living in peace."

Later, at lunch, Roland Lewis, the executive director of Habitat for Humanity NYC, commented on the spirit of religious cooperation, and pointed out that "King's vision of humanity and the need to address injustice resonates with the Jewish tradition" and that he was pleased to see the interaction of Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Hannah handed me another metal disk, and pushing a new piece of insulation against the wall with my shoulder, I hammered a nail into place. In less than three months 10 families would be moving into a new home.

Exactly what Reverend King had in mind.