King was his name, and regal he was — full of quiet dignity, power, and wisdom.

I remember Martin Luther King during the siege of Birmingham, Ala. Bull Connor’s rednecks and bloodhounds were baying in the streets. In a modest motel room, a bunch of Conservative rabbis were listening spellbound as he quoted the prophet Amos and the philosopher Martin Buber, expounding on the spiritual and ethical foundations of the civil rights struggle. With true biblical fervor and modern sophistication, he justified the sacrificial courage demanded by freedom rides, sit-ins, marches, and demonstrations. For those of us who were present, his gentle voice and deathless message remain a lifelong inspiration

For the American Jewish community, the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is an occasion to recall the historic bonds between African-Americans and American Jews —bonds forged in alliances for important causes, unique cultural collaborations, and, sadly, in their common fate as victims of racism and persecution.

That shared fate is symbolized in two stunning editorial cartoons by Edmund Duffy that appeared in the Baltimore Sun in the 1930s. Duffy (1899-1962), who was born and raised in Jersey City, studied at the legendary Art Students’ League school in New York City, where he developed his signature charcoal-style technique. In 1924, Duffy landed the position of editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun, a post he held for the next 24 years. During that period, Duffy won the Pulitzer Prize for cartooning three times, a feat that only five cartoonists in American history have achieved.

Alexis Kashar was listening intently to the speaker at a recent Jewish federation event in White Plains, N.Y.

A closer look revealed that her eyes were trained not on the podium but on Naomi Brunnlehrman, who was seated in front of the speaker translating the lecture into American Sign Language.

Kashar, 43, a longtime civil rights lawyer, has been deaf since birth. Five years ago she and Brunnlehrman, co-founder of the Jewish Deaf Resource Center, asked the UJA-Federation of New York to subsidize ASL interpreters, so Kashar and other deaf Jews in the New York area could take part in Jewish communal events.

As the mother of a child with developmental disabilities, Rena (not her name) often feels overwhelmed by her marathon-like schedule of shuttling her daughter to therapists, advocating for her at school, meeting with her caseworker, and pleading with the insurance company to cover the much-needed therapies.

Between private school tuition, tutors, therapy, and medical bills, Rena laments she is facing financial burdens that would leave anyone worried about their future.

Worst of all, said the Fair Lawn mother, is the pain she feels when well-intentioned friends in her community prattle on about the relatively minor travails of their typically well-functioning children. “They say they’re so depressed that their son is leaving for college, or they complain about the tablecloths at their daughter’s wedding, and the whole time, I’m biting my lip, thinking about how my daughter will never graduate college or get married,” she said. “They have no idea how lucky they are, and no sense of what I’m going through.”

Our Way’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Singles Group, a program of the Orthodox Union, will hold its annual retreat Friday through Sunday, February 11 to 13, at the Jewish Center in Manhattan. This event is being held in conjunction with NAIM — the North American Inclusion Month program sponsored by the OU’s National Jewish Council for Disabilities, which includes Our Way.

Sixteen years ago, facing the usual slow week at the first of the secular year, The Jewish Standard created what has turned into an enduring feature: naming the newsmakers of the year just passed (or, in this case, just passing).

This has been a challenging year, punctuated by an earthquake and storms as well as the continuing harsh winds of the recession. But we have also seen the community rising to meet those challenges in creative as well as tried-and-true ways.

We continue in what has become a tradition by stating our standards:

What makes a newsmaker? Philanthropy? Maybe, but also creative use of resources. Tragedy? Yes, but also survival. Personal accomplishments? Yes, but also efforts on behalf of others. Scholarship? Yes, but also originality. Political daring? Yes, but also political dealing.

He is a crook. He cheated people out of money they had counted on. He’s the infamous Bernard Madoff — and the media never miss an opportunity to point out that he is Jewish.

Jews for ages have been accused of being unscrupulous and money-mad, and the Madoff episode seems to have given fresh ammunition to anti-Semites who foster the Jews-are-greedy stereotype — which they do typically on the Internet, where morons, weirdos, losers, creeps, and other assorted wackos can happily and anonymously express their psychopathology.

Readers of Abraham Foxman’s new book, “Jews and Money,” have told him that it’s lively and informative. But some readers have registered an objection.

To the title.

“The only debate out there is about the title,” said Foxman in a recent phone interview. “Paul Volcker,” a former secretary of the treasury who wrote the book’s introduction, “called me and said, ‘Listen, Abe, while I was reading an advance copy I had it on my desk, and every Jewish person who walked in and saw it was horrified. Maybe you want to change the title.’