Son of “America’s most arrested rabbi” follows in his father’s footsteps in St. Augustine

Israel Dresner was just 18 years old when he was first arrested. It was 1947, and the man who would become known as America’s most arrested rabbi was protesting against the British government’s decision to turn away a boat full of Holocaust survivors seeking refuge in British-occupied Palestine.

Dresner was arrested three more times – in 1961, 1962 and 1964 – before his fateful arrest on June 18, 1964, during a demonstration with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine. Dresner and 15 other rabbis were among those protesting against 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 get out of the water, hotel owner James Brock poured acid into the water.

A photo of Brock pouring acid into the pool attracted national media attention, and when the protesters were released from jail the next day, the U.S. Senate passed the Civil Rights Act, ending a 72-day deadlock that had held up the bill.

Dresner’s son Avi grew up with these stories, but this month, 60 years later, he visited St. Augustine for the very first time and followed in his father’s footsteps while filming 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 building was demolished decades ago and now stands as a Hilton hotel. 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 and look at the stained glass windows – of Jesus, no less – that my father must have looked at in the same pews,” says Dresner Jacksonville today“It was incredibly personal. Meaningful. I almost collapsed in the church.”

Rabbi Dresner died in 2022, and even before that, his son’s mission was to carry on his father’s legacy. Avi Dresner, an award-winning journalist, lives in Massachusetts.

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

“Justice, justice you shall pursue”

The arrests at the Monson Motor Lodge were 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 what it was: a milestone for the alliance between Jewish and black civil rights activists.

Avi Dresner was not yet 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 commitment to justice was crucial to him.

Rabbi Dresner’s commitment to social justice and his lobbying did not end in St. Augustine. In 1980, he was arrested again while protesting against apartheid in front of the South African consulate in New York. Until the end of his life, the rabbi was a staunch critic of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Whenever he had a platform, he used it to speak out against whatever injustice he was experiencing,” says Avi Dresner.

Among them, says Dresner, was his bar mitzvah in 1982. His father’s speech at the reception lasted 45 minutes, during which he denounced Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon.

His commitment earned him many friends, such as civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy, whose daughter Donzaleigh is still friends with Avi. But it also made him enemies.

“When I was a toddler, we got shot in the back window of my mother’s car because my father was so open about school prayer,” says Dresner. “You either 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 a strong moral compass in him from a young age.

“I think I grew up with a very, very strong awareness of this Jewish mission,Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof“Justice, justice you shall pursue,” he says.

With the documentary, King said, he wanted to continue the universe’s moral tendency toward justice.

“For me, my father was the key receiver that King brought into the game when it came to third and long. He knew he could count on him. My father can’t move the ball down the field anymore, but I can,” says Dresner. “For me, the documentary is a piece. It continues the work that my father dedicated his life to. If I can use his example as an incentive for further action, then the mission is accomplished.”

COVID-19 has set things back, and it will be several years before the documentary hits theaters, but it’s not the only way Dresner wants to honor 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? Former Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield or The office‘s John Krasinski.

Learn more about local civil rights history

The Frisch Family Holocaust Memorial Gallery is located in Jacksonville We could not remain silent The exhibit is on view now, with an open house on Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. The gallery is located at The LJD Jewish Family & Community Services at 8540 Baycenter Road. Regular hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Several events are planned in St. Augustine as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society will hold its 11th annual commemoration of the mass arrest of rabbis at noon on June 18 at the former site of the Monson Motor Lodge, the Hilton hotel at 32 Avenida Menendez.