The newspaper article in this Document Study comes from Rabbi William G. Braude's personal papers, and brief biographies of Rabbi Braude and other Rabbis involved in the incident are included.

William G. Braude (1907-1988)
Born in Lithuania in 1907, William Braude came to America with his parents in 1920. In 1931, he was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement's seminary. His first and only pulpit was at Temple Beth-El in Providence, RI, where he worked on behalf of African Americans even before the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and continued his involvement as a supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr. However, he did not support all civil rights legislation. In this he differed from many of his congregants who disagreed with his conservative politics.

Saul Leeman
Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the rabbinic school of the Conservative movement, Saul Leeman had a pulpit at the Cranston Jewish Center in Cranston, RI (now Temple Torat Yisrael) during the 1960s.

Nathan Rosen
Nathan Rosen's first pulpit was in Savannah, GA, where he learned about Jim Crow laws and the degradation of America's African American community first hand. By the 1960s, Rabbi Rosen was the director of the Hillel Foundation at Brown University, in Providence RI.

Part I

1. Initial assessment: Who wrote this article? When?
2. In what context was it written?
3. Who was the intended audience for this document? How do you think this influenced the message of the article and/or what the rabbis told the interviewer?
4. What did Rabbis Braude, Leeman, and Rosen do, according to this article?
5. According to this article, why did these rabbis choose to march in Alabama? What other reasons do you think might have influenced their decision?
6. According to this article, what kind of reception did these rabbis receive from people in Alabama? How did this reflect the feelings of the different groups whom they met?
7. Did they feel that the march was effective? Why?
8. How did the rabbis build on their experience by bringing it to the attention of others?

Part II

1. How do you think these rabbis' experience and/or Jewish values influence their participation in the Civil Rights Movement? What clues from the article make you think that?
2. How would you describe the role that these rabbis played in the Civil Rights Movement?
3. Do you think this is an appropriate role for a rabbi? Why or why not?
4. Are there any current political/social issues on which you think rabbis today should take a stand? What kind of role would you want to see them take?