It is very special for me to be here on this occasion [of the Abraham Joshua Heschel Award ceremony] which is honoring my father and my mother for the work they accomplished, for the home they created, for the values they always stood for.
I want to say a few words about my father. The first thing, of course, that we might ask is: What does it mean to create peace? Obviously, it means a commitment to certain principles — you have to stand for something. But it also means creating a certain kind of people, people with certain kinds of human qualities.
And that, I think, was the central message of my father’s work. My father asked, ‘What kinds of qualities does it take inside of us and our souls to create a world of peace?’; and he asked, ‘How can we shape ourselves to bring about a world of peace? What kinds of people do we have to be?’ And for my father, the central qualities were compassion and empathy.
[Content continues with theological discussion and personal memories, ending with the Selma march anecdote and his famous quote about legs praying]