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Rabbi Marla Feldman is the Director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Feldman is an accomplished spiritual leader, lawyer, writer, and activist for social justice. |
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The Jewish community has been in a leadership role in efforts to address the
genocide taking place in Sudan. To me, The question of why Jews should care
about Darfur is a very strange one because I take it as intuitive that, of
course, we will care when genocide is taking place around the world, when there
are travesties of justice taking place, when people are being annihilated and
villages are being destroyed, refugees are dying by the hundreds every day for
lack of medical care and food and sanitation and refugee camps.
Of
course, we care. So, I take it as a given. And yet, we do get this question all
the time. And I think the answer is two-fold.
In large part, the answer,
I think, lies within our historical experience, the Jewish community's
historical experience. Jews empathize with the victims of ethnic cleansing
because we have been victims ourselves.
We work to aid the weak and
desperate refugees because not so long ago, we were refugees and very few
individuals helped us. While some did and we acknowledge them and we honor them,
far too many others did not. And that historical memory stays with us.
I
think also from a religious perspective, there's very clear mandate in our
tradition to care about the weak and the vulnerable. Jewish tradition commands,
you shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.
In our global
village, we're all neighbors. And so, we can't be bystanders and stand by when
children are targets of soldiers, when women and girls are raped as part of a
military strategy. We can't stand idly by as villages are being destroyed or
offer empty promises when people are being terrorized into leaving their homes.
That's what happened to our community and we know better.
In the cases
of Bosnia and Kosovo, the Jewish community was front and center in efforts in
those travesties. In the case of Africa, there are fewer groups with a lot of
political clout and experience in organizing that would be natural leaders in
this issue, in which case the—it's even more important that the faith community
step up and bring its experience to the table and organize these coalitions on
Sudan.
So, in many ways, the Jewish community was an instigator to the
Save Darfur Coalition and many of its efforts. But it is certainly not alone.
The Jewish community is on board on this issue across the religious
spectrum—Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist. In almost every
community that I know of where the Jewish community has organized around this
issue, it has been across the religious spectrum within the Jewish community.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs—an umbrella organization which represents
the broad spectrum of the American Jewish community—has been working
side-by-side with the American Jewish World Service to organize the American
Jewish community.
The first and most immediate step for Jews is to take
part in the rally in Washington on April 30. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
said when he marched in Selma, Alabama with the civil rights marchers in the
1960s, he felt as if his feet were praying. We should all be praying with our
feet on Sunday, April 30, at the Rally to End Genocide in Washington, DC. For
those who can't come to the rally, the Million Voices Campaign is an effort to garner a million
signatures and postcards to deliver to elected officials to let them know that
we want them to intercede on behalf of the victims in Sudan, that we want them
to take action in the international arena, to work with our partners at the
United Nations, with NATO and wherever there is help to be had in supporting the
African Union troops and relief efforts on behalf of the victims.
So, if
you can't be there at the rally, sign a postcard, send it in. Find other ways to
let your elected officials know that you care about what's happening in Darfur
and you want them to use their resources to help.
And third, educate
yourself and others about what's going on. I think when people hear about
genocide, they care.
In the Jewish community, we're commemorating
Holocaust Memorial Day throughout the country. And we'll be doing a lot of
serious thinking about our role in the world today and what we've learned from
our past.
One of the things that Elie Wiesel has said is that the real
crime that took place in the Holocaust was the crime of indifference, that one
was either a victim or a perpetrator or a bystander. And we can't let that
happen again.
So, if we've learned anything from our past, it's that we
can't be bystanders. We have to speak up. We have to educate ourselves and
others. And when we do that, people will not be bystanders. They will step up.
They will rally. They will speak out. They will let their elected officials know
that we care.
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