Son of 'America's Most Arrested Rabbi' Traces Father's Footsteps in St. Augustine

Israel Dresner was only 18 years old when he was first arrested. The year was 1947, and the man who would become America's most arrested rabbi was protesting the British government's decision to refuse a boatload of Holocaust survivors from seeking refuge in British-occupied Palestine.

Dresner was arrested three more times – in 1961, 1962 and 1964 – before his fateful arrest in Saint Augustine on June 18, 1964, during a demonstration with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Dresner and 15 other rabbis were among the demonstrators racists. segregation at the Monson Motor Lodge on Avenida Menendez.

During their arrest, other activists jumped into the lodge's pool to swim, and when they refused to come out of the water, hotel owner James Brock poured acid into the pool. the water.

A photo of Brock pouring acid into the pool attracted national media attention, and when protesters were released from jail the next day, the U.S. Senate passed the Civil Rights Act, ending 72 days of the systematic obstruction that had blocked it.

Dresner's son Avi grew up hearing these stories, but after 60 years, he visited St. Augustine this month for the very first time, retracing his father's footsteps as he filmed scenes for a documentary about his father's legacy that he has been working on since 2019. .

He visited the site of his father's arrest, where the original lodge was demolished decades ago and where a Hilton hotel now stands. He visited the remains of the prison where his father was held. And he visited St. Paul AME Church, where King had invited his father to speak.

“I stand there, at the pulpit where my father stood, looking at the stained glass windows – of Jesus, no less – that my father would have looked at, in the same pews,” Dresner says. Jacksonville today. “It was incredibly personal. Significant. I almost collapsed in the church.

Rabbi Dresner died in 2022, and his son was already on a mission to share his father's legacy. Avi Dresner, award-winning journalist, lives in Massachusetts.

While in the area, he attended and spoke at an exhibit on Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement at the Frisch Family Holocaust Memorial Gallery in Jacksonville, and he visited St. Augustine with the leader of the Jewish Historical Society of St. Augustine – and a friend of his father, Rabbi Merrill Shapiro.

“Justice, you will pursue justice”

The arrests at the Monson Motor Lodge marked the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history. Dresner says that today, amid ongoing racial reckoning and visible anti-Semitism in America, it is more important than ever to remember the event for exactly what it was: a historic moment for the alliance between Jewish and black civil rights advocates.

Avi Dresner was not alive at the time. He was born in 1969, almost a year after King's assassination in Memphis. But throughout his life, he says, his father's dedication to justice was decisive.

That’s because Rabbi Dresner’s involvement in social justice and advocacy didn’t stop at St. Augustine. He was arrested again in 1980 while protesting apartheid outside the South African consulate in New York, and until his final days the rabbi was a vocal critic of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.

“If he had a platform, he would use it to speak out against any form of injustice he sees right now,” Avi Dresner said.

Including, Dresner shares, at his 1982 bar mitzvah. His father's speech at the reception included 45 minutes denouncing Israel's recent invasion of Lebanon.

His advocacy won him many friends, such as civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy, whose daughter Donzaleigh remains friends with Avi. But it also made him enemies.

“We were shot through the back window of my mother's car when I was a baby because of my father's outspokenness during school prayers,” Dresner said. “Either you loved him and agreed with him, or you hated him and disagreed with everything.”

Dresner says his father's relentless drive to speak truth to power instilled in him a strong moral compass from a young age.

“I think I certainly grew up with a very, very strong sense of this very Jewish mission of 'Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof“Justice, you will pursue justice,” he said.

He says his goal with the documentary is to continue what King said was the universe's moral trend toward justice.

“To me, my dad was the clutch receiver that King put in the game when he was third and long. He knew he could count on him. My dad can’t move that ball around the field anymore, but I can,” Dresner said. “The documentary, for me, is a play. It is continuing the work to which my father dedicated his life. If I can use his example as a spur to further action, then mission accomplished.

COVID-19 set things back and the documentary is still several years away from being seen by the public, but that's not the only way Dresner is honoring his father's legacy. He also co-wrote a biopic that is now in the hands of a major Hollywood producer, he says. And he's already thinking about who could play his father. His favorites? Andrew Garfield, former Spider Man actor, or OfficeIt's John Krasinski.

Learn about local civil rights history

In Jacksonville, the Frisch Family Holocaust Memorial Gallery's We couldn't stay silent The exhibit is now on display, with an open house on Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. The gallery is located at LJD Jewish Family & Community Services, 8540 Baycenter Road. Its usual hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.

In St. Augustine, a number of events are planned in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Jewish Historical Society of St. Augustine will hold its 11th annual commemoration of the mass arrest of rabbis on June 18 at noon, at the former site of the Monson Motor Lodge, the Hilton Hotel at 32 Menendez Avenue.