It is hard to know where to begin to think about landmark study on religion in America released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  (You can find the full report here.)

USA Today (whose Cathy Grossman is one of the most interesting religion reporters writing today) offers an admittedly too-quick summary of key findings:

• Faith is fluid: 44% say they're no longer tied to the religious or secular upbringing of their childhood. They've changed religions or denominations, adopted a faith for the first time or abandoned any affiliation altogether.
• "Nothing" matters: 12.1% say their religious identity is "nothing in particular," outranking every denomination and tradition except Catholics (23.9%) and all groups of Baptists (17.2%).
• Protestants are fading: 51.3% call themselves Protestant, but roughly one-third of this group were "unable or unwilling" to describe their denomination.
• Immigrants sustain Catholic numbers: 46% of foreign-born U.S. adults are Catholics, compared with only 21% of native-born adults. Latinos are now 45% of all U.S. Catholics ages 18-29.

The JTA offers this summary of the report’s portrait of the American Jewish community: “Jews earn more money, are better educated and have fewer children at home than the members of most other faiths.”

The sheer amount of data is staggering, and it will take week and months to begin to digest the findings.   As I wade into the report, I will share my thoughts here.

In the meantime, a few links to best early discussions I have seen. 

• The always-insightful Get Religion website has a very helpful post collecting how different leading newspapers reported the story.
• The JTA’s Sue Fishkoff has a great story on the “Jewish angles,” including some interesting criticism of the study’s sampling technique of American Jewry.
• Over at Wall of Separation, the blog of American’s United for the Separation of Church and State, Rob Boston has an interesting post highlighting (of course) the study’s implications for religious liberty.

More soon.

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michelle Cravez is a senior at Killian Senior High in Miami, FL. She currently serves as the NFTY-STR Social Action Vice President and is the Social Action Vice President-Elect for NFTY.

This is cross-posted at the Union for Reform Judaism and NFTY's iTorah, http://urj.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=18587



Malaria causes nearly 1.5 million deaths a year and infects almost 500 million people worldwide. Ninety percent of the deaths caused by malaria occur in Africa where the disease is a leading cause of death for children. These big numbers are paired with big problems. And yet, just one small creature, the mosquito, is the source. The Union for Reform Judaism has joined with the Nothing but Nets grassroots campaign in an initiative to fight malaria. The campaign, inspired by Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly, is now supported by NFTY as partners of the Union. Reform Jews from across North America are raising money to buy mosquito nets for families in Africa. The fact is that with nets malaria is avoidable and much easier to stop than once thought. Our goal is to provide 50,000 nets to help prevent the spread of the disease and save lives.

• Why are we donating money for nets and not for actual vaccinations?

Currently, there is no consistent, effective malaria vaccine because plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria, goes through several changes and often becomes resistant to the drugs used to treat it. Donating bed nets, therefore, is so important because they provide one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of the disease. Net donation is one of the easiest ways to take a true stance on combating malaria and the sooner we can help, the better.

 

• What exactly is malaria and what are its effects?

Malaria is spread by mosquitoes, which carry a certain blood parasite known as plasmodium. The numbers are scary. As noted above, more that 500 million people a year contract the disease and more than 1 million die annually from it. Even more shocking is the fact that every 30 seconds, someone contracts the disease. Infected humans experience flu-like symptoms that can result in coma and death. Africa tends to be a hotspot for malaria for several reasons. One is that the region possesses a certain type of mosquito that is suitable for carrying plasmodium. Another is that proper medical therapy and health facilities to treat malaria are severely lacking in these countries. 

The effects of malaria are devastating, not only because of the mental and physical pain and suffering of the victims and their families, but also because of the economic burden put on the countries. According to the Nothing but Nets site, “Malaria accounts for up to half of all hospital admissions and outpatient visits in Africa.” In addition, nearly $12 billion is lost in production due to the disease.
Only female mosquitoes can actually transmit the disease. The good news is that malaria can be both prevented and treated. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the most effective drugs available for treating malaria. In order to directly help the people who need them, less expensive ACT’s need to be developed, along with new strategies to distribute them.

 

• Send a net. Save a life.

It really can be that simple. One hundred percent of every $10 donation to Nothing but Nets goes to the purchase and distribution of nets, as well as to education about the proper use of an insecticide bed net. These nets kill the mosquitoes once they land on the net itself, preventing them from biting in the middle of the night, and stopping them from finding their next victim. Scientists suggest that bed nets can help reduce malaria transmission by nearly 50 percent. We all want to be, “the change that you wish to see in the world,” but sometimes we just don’t know how to take the first step. This may just be that step for many of us; for others, it is another stride toward making a difference.

 

• Learn more and spread the word

If you are interested in learning more about the Nothing but Nets campaign, I strongly encourage you to contact me. We can continue to save lives by spreading the word, involving synagogues, individual TYG’s and other youth programs.

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman announced a plan to create a program to “allow newly admitted undergraduates to spend a year of public service abroad before beginning their freshman year. The program would enable students to pursue a tuition-free, pre-collegiate enrichment year outside their home country with support from the University.”

I have often thought about the benefits of a “gap year,” as our friends across the pond call the year between high school and university.  A year spent exploring some of the world, rather than learning about it in textbooks, would be a great benefit to those trying to decide on a life’s path.  Princeton’s plan to focus program participants on public service, and to help subsidize the year, is even more admirable (and admittedly a privilege that comes with being a wealthy Ivy league school.)
 
Public service programs are somewhat common in high school.  Some states have even taken it to the next level: In 1992, Maryland became the first state to require service learning as a condition of high school graduation.  Encouraging students to participate in public service at the local, national, or international level should be the rule, not the exception, and a part of school from kindergarten through college.
 
Kudos to Princeton for its leadership.

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Emily Kane is a former Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.

Plastic bags are officially out of style in Ireland. In 2002, Ireland passed legislation instituting a plastic bag tax of 33 cents per bag. Many were concerned that the public would revolt, but quite the opposite has occurred – people have gathered their cloth bags and embraced the shift. Reports say that sporting a plastic bag in Dublin solicits disapproving looks from strangers, and lectures from friends and family. The pressure has paid off! Since the 2002 law took effect, Ireland has reduced their plastic bag consumption by 90%. With fewer bags in demand, approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved. If Ireland’s (Population 4,109,086) reduced consumption has yielded savings 18M liters of oil, imagine what the United States (Population 301,139,947) could do! While San Francisco instituted a citywide ban on plastic bags last year, we have yet to pass like federal legislation. For those of us who don’t reside in the city by the bay, there is much work to be done!

Push your elected officials to pass legislation similar to San Francisco or Ireland’s.

Approach your local grocer or retail store if they are not already on board. Speak to them about 1) offering a per bag credit, charity contribution, or other incentive for customers that choose to bring their own and/or 2) introducing a small fee (15 cents) per disposable plastic bag as a disincentive. It saves stores money, enhances their public image, and helps the environment! • Enact your own personal ban on paper and plastic. Stores including Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Costco offer inexpensive reusable bags for purchase.

For other great reusable bag options check out this site. Hint: These make great gifts!

Reusable bags?: How chic!

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In last week’s Washington Post, the Editorial Board wrote a thought-provoking piece in which they compared the recently announced 9/11 trials (which we have learned will include the possibility of capital punishment) to another famous set of tribunals known as the Malmedy Case.  In that instance, American-run trials held in Dachau convicted and sentenced to death 73 Nazi officials in 1946,. These men, however, were later released because of the treatment of defendants during the trial which outraged so many across the world, especially at home in the United States.  The commissions failed, the Post points out, not because these men were innocent, but rather because those running the proceedings forgot something fundamental about contemporary understandings of justice -- people of the world, and American’s in particular, will not stand for a seemingly just outcome in a criminal trial if it has not been achieved by just means. Period.

The Editors then ask the question: will these 9/11 trials be part of this legacy?  Will these defendants be tried using the standards of the hastily passed Military Commissions Act of 2006 without the protections required of them under American or International law? Will there be due process? Will coerced evidence be introduced? And, most importantly, will they be innocent until proven guilty? If not, the editorial hints, the 9/11 Trials will likely be seen as a failure.

But what if the legacy we relied upon for the 9/11 trials was that of Nuremberg and not of Dachau?  Instead of using rules which break down our own judicial principles, these men bent on destruction could be tried based on those very principles that we as Americans fight to protect.  As Justice Robert Jackson famously explained in his opening statement in Nuremberg, we could recognize that “civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace…”

This is an important opportunity.  As one letter to the editor put it, “I hope that these prosecutions will be a sterling example of American jurisprudence…it wouldn’t do for our enemies to point to the ex post facto prohibition of our Constitution and suggest that we don’t live up to our own principles."  We can only hope that we will live up to our own principles by living up to the legacy given to us by the Nuremberg trials and not the failed trials of Dachau.

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Donald Cohen-Cutler is Communications Manager at the Union for Reform Judaism. He is also a former Eisendrath Legislative Assistant.

There is a “quiet revolution” taking place in a Walgreens warehouse. World News Tonight on ABC ran a fascinating story that was intended to make you go “huh.” It started with a not so surprising, but equally disturbing, statistic that 44% of adults with a disability are unemployed. While there are laws in place to stop discrimination, like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other state level programs, the rate of unemployment of the disabled community is more than 30% higher than the national average.

Walgreens, a corporate drug store chain in the United States, has made it practice to hire and expect the same work from people with mental and physical disabilities in its distribution center in Anderson, S.C. From the young man with autism in the shipping department to the HR recruiter with Cerebral Palsy, people with disabilities not only comprise 40% of the 700 person staff at this facility, they are making the distribution center stronger.

Randy Lewis, an executive whose son is on the autism spectrum and created this program because of his personal connection to the issue, noted that the Anderson warehouse is as productive as any other in the Walgreens system. He also said, “This isn’t just a good thing to do, it is right thing to do.”

It is wonderful that Walgreens has taken on this program but it clearly isn’t enough. In the coming weeks the ADA, the legal protections against discrimination of people with disabilities, is up for reauthorization by Congress. Please take action now to support this legislation. If Walgreens can figure it out, we need to help Congress do the good and right thing for disabled Americans.

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Another day, another senseless act of gun violence – 15-year-old Lawrence King was declared brain dead today after suffering gunshot wounds to the head, inflicted on Tuesday by a 14-year-old classmate.

 

It’s a difficult story to reconcile with today’s op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, in which Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison argues that our forefathers’ decision to specifically address gun ownership in the Bill of Rights suggests that Jefferson and friends used the word “militia” in reference to individual rights rather than to the rights of the army.

 

If the Second Amendment simply read, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” you’d have no problem convincing me that our forefathers were adamantly supportive of the individual right of all Americans to own guns. But because they explicitly chose to include the “militia” bit (bearing in mind that “militia” does, in fact, mean “army”) I remain convinced that this country’s founders never meant for the Second Amendment to advocate for individual citizens’ inalienable right to unchecked, unrestricted gun ownership.

 

Were Jefferson around today, I’d love to ask him whether he ever intended for the Second Amendment to take absolute priority over the amendment that precedes it – the one that guarantees us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Emphasis on “life.”

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On January 28, 2008, President George W. Bush had the eyes of the nation upon him as he gave his final State of the Union Address. Three days later—with far less pomp and circumstance—Joe A. Garcia gave his own evaluation of the Nations’ condition. Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians, gave the 6th annual State of Indian Nations Address (read or watch it).

Garcia’s address was titled “Through the Eyes of Our Children: Hope for a Restored Native America.”

Their needs, he noted, are profound:

• Native children face devastating poverty. According to the most recent census data nearly a third of Native children live below the federal poverty level. On reservations, it’s over 44 percent, with half of those living in what is defined as “deep poverty.”

• With fewer than half of Native young people graduating from high school, and more than 8 in 10 eighth-graders reading below grade level, we need better education programs that work for our communities.

• We need intervention programs for at-risk Indian youth, and improved law enforcement overall.

• Finally, inadequate health care, and a lack of information about healthy lifestyles, are stealing years – sometimes decades – from Indian lives. Life expectancy for the average American is 76 years, 20 years longer than the life expectancy for males on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, who have the shortest lifespan of all Americans.

Garcia said he recalled holding his children and grandchildren in his arms and thought about just how helpless children are. “They are shaped less by their own decisions than by ours,” he said.

Garcia outlined several areas to strengthen the children of Indian Nations and their futures: economic development, better education, stronger law-enforcement in communities, and increased access to quality health care.

The suffering of the Native Americans is one of the great stains on our nation’s history. But the future of this country and this people is unwritten.

Garcia concluded:

Through the eyes of a child, we see too much hurt, and regret, and loss.

But through our own eyes, we can see opportunity, find answers, and make lives better.

It is time to change the view through all eyes. And with your help, we can make 2008 a powerful year for change.

As Indian people it is our promise before the world that our ways will remain, our people will thrive, and our Nations will stand through time.

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We’ve heard it all: the sky is falling, the economy is in bad shape. Everyone run for cover. There has been no shortage of “analysis” about what to do, how to fix it, where we went wrong, and what the consequences are.

Robert Reich, whose name may be familiar to some, has published an op/ed in the New York Times all about who, what, where, when, why and how the economic turmoil we’re in exists.

He writes about how deep-seated this entire credit “problem” is.  Neglecting of course, any role he might have played in furthering it.  He discusses how middle income Americans are looking more and more like poorer Americans, and how tight people’s belts have to be.  But this got me thinking:

Most women streamed into the work force in the 1970s less because new professional opportunities opened up to them than because they had to prop up family incomes. The percentage of American working mothers with school-age children has almost doubled since 1970 — to more than 70 percent. But there’s a limit to how many mothers can maintain paying jobs.

I wanted to say, “why is there a limit?” and what of the 35% of mothers with school age kids working in 1970? That’s 35% of families – it’s a third of the pie!! We can’t pretend that being at 2/3 isn’t both a victory for Women’s rights and equality and a failure of economic policy making.  I am struck that this new third of families, who have apparently needed the extra money since 1970 are enough to pull down the entire economy when the first third was already struggling then.

Despite my discomfort with his whole theory about why women entered and stayed in the workforce, he proposes some pretty concrete remedies that seem quite achievable:

A larger earned-income tax credit, financed by a higher marginal income tax on top earners, is required. The tax credit functions like a reverse income tax. Enlarging it would mean giving workers at the bottom a bigger wage supplement, as well as phasing it out at a higher wage. The current supplement for a worker with two children who earns up to $16,000 a year is about $5,000. That amount declines as earnings increase and is eliminated at about $38,000. It should be increased to, say, $8,000 at the low end and phased out at an income of $46,000.

So – what do you think?  What would Reich’s policies do for all those folks who earn below 46k but above 38k now eligible for real genuine tax support?  The risks Reich outlines are great: he says we face a reduced standard of living – and the only way out is “to give middle- and lower-income Americans more buying power — and not just temporarily.”  Well, we all know it would be nice to have more buying power; but why doesn’t Reich mention affordable housing, or college tuition, or some of the biggest ticket items in the budgets of families and individuals?

I wonder if any of the “analysis” can be trusted anymore.  Wasn’t this credit crisis spawned by credit rating agencies telling everyone these were solid investments – low risk, low return?  And wasn’t there a really positive consumer spending report? When it comes to the economy, who can you trust anymore?

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Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, when an estimated 10% of wedding proposals occur. But while many heterosexual couples will spend tomorrow making plans for their nuptials, same-sex couples nationwide are spending their Valentine’s Day fighting for the equality they’re still denied.

Feb. 10-16 is Freedom to Marry Week, when same-sex couples and their allies across the country are making their voices heard in the fight for marriage equality. And as the perfect kickoff to the week, a New York appellate court made a monumental ruling last Friday when it decided that out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York.

So whether you’re gay or straight, single or taken, celebrate your Valentine’s Day by finding a Freedom to Marry Week event in your town or organizing one of your own – because although this week is more than halfway over, the fight for marriage equality still has along way go to.

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lauren B. Pack is a third-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. She recently returned from a Rabbinical Student mission with members of seven seminaries to Africa with American Jewish World Service.

Forty-three years ago this March, moved by the injustice they found within American society, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews traveled south to Alabama for an interfaith meeting of sorts. These Jews saw that the African American community was trapped in a narrow and difficult place. Racism confined them to certain places, certain jobs, certain roles, certain stereotypes. They too were imprisoned in their own narrow Egypt. Yet they longed to begin the dangerous and difficult, yet miraculous journey through their own Reed Sea and into the open wilderness of freedom. In support, others came to help break the entrapments caused by the narrowness of American society at that time. And when Martin Luther King Jr. started walking from Selma to Montgomery, in a way, he recreated the exodus from Egypt. Certainly, in a later discussion about his participation in the 1965 march, philosopher and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel stated that “when I marched in Selma, my feet were praying.”
And surely, as we help others begin their own journey to freedom, and even when we started our own, we know that this is true. The Israelites themselves cried out in joy upon their first steps into the wilderness of freedom with the familiar words of Mi Chamocha.

However, as our world grows smaller and smaller, thanks to the tying force of the internet and other modern conveniences which ease communication, I fear that once again we as a society are falling into Egypt’s narrow straights. Less than thirty-six hours ago, I departed from Africa after participating in a Rabbinic Students Delegation to Ghana. There, we met with a variety of non-governmental organizations, many concerned with the existing and rapidly expanding health crisis in Africa. About 33.5 million individuals are infected with HIV and AIDS worldwide; however, more than two-thirds of these people live in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Ghana, and more than three-quarters of HIV/AIDS related deaths in the world occur within this same region. I am sure that I am not saying anything terribly shocking when I report that the AIDS pandemic in Africa has reached a critical point. But that is exactly the issue – my all-too-brief volunteer expedition with the American Jewish World Service did not uncover any revelatory information that could not be found in past editions of the New York Times or Newsweek Magazine. The issue is that we have allowed ourselves to be bound and pushed into a narrow place of mixed hopelessness and ambivalence.
    
Egypt once again is before us.

Our willful blindness to the strife caused by the health crisis in Africa has entrapped us – we have created for ourselves our own Egypt, our own narrow place, that like the Israelites express in this week’s portion, this seems preferable. We prefer the discomfort of the known over the risks found in the open wilderness of freedom, and the enormous efforts that it takes to walk out of Egypt. But, many of those living in Ghana and throughout sub-Saharan Africa are trapped in their own Egypt, enslaved by the masters of poverty and disease. For us here in the United States, it is easier to break our bonds of apathy, and in the process help many in Africa begin on their own long path towards the wilderness. Yet, our struggles are tied; there are first steps away from our narrow place that we can consider taking. Within the next few weeks, Congress and the Senate are marking up the renewal bill for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. I urge you to take a look at this vital piece of legislation that has such potential to effect change, yet falls short by denying essential educational information about basic preventative methods from HIV/AIDS. This impedes aide monies from achieving their full potential.

Now is the time to act. Now is the time for us to take steps once more to move out of the Egypt of apathy, to escape from our narrow place, in order to help fix the injustice that we know exists in our world and to begin to move once again into the wilderness of freedom. Now is the time, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, to make justice a reality for all God’s children [and] we [should] not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Now is the time to take steps away from our narrow places. Now is the time to help others begin to taste the pleasures of freedom from their masters of deadly disease, and to enable others to start to sing the joyful Mi Chamocha which this freedom inspired us to do on the shores of the sea. Now is the time, now is our chance, as Heschel said, to pray with our feet.

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With so much attention paid to the horserace of the presidential campaigns, its refreshing to see a reminder that politics is, in the end, about policies.  Senator Casey (D- PA), however, did just that on Monday when he wrote an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer exploring the importance of talking about Nuclear Weapons and keeping them out of the hands of the world’s worst.

Hopefully all of the remaining presidential candidates will take note of Senator Casey’s position and hopefully others will join Senator Casey in encouraging a policy-focused Presidential campaign season.

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No matter which team you rooted for in last Sunday’s Superbowl, all football fans, Giants and Patriots alike, should be able to agree on one thing – the safety and health of their favorite players.

In this week’s Washington Post Magazine, former NFL great Dave Pear reveals his personal struggle with debilitating, football-induced injuries. Now 54, the one-time Tampa Bay Buccaneer suffers from crippling neck and back injuries sustained during his run in the league, injuries that have left him walking with a cane and battling both constant fatigue and severe memory loss.

Pear isn’t the only one – others former players report suffering from cognitive disabilities, ruined hips and knees, frontal lobe damage and more, oftentimes leaving them broke, hopeless and pained. Their stories, like Pear’s, are heartbreaking.

Sadly, such stories aren’t football-specific. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from disabilities that keep them from living the lives many of us take for granted. Saddled with medical bills too massive to comprehend and abandoned by both their employers and their government, these people live in constant pain and incomprehensible poverty.

The able-bodied and pain-free among us often ask, “Why should I spend my time, money or compassion on someone else’s problems?” But after reading Dave Pear’s story and the stories of so many other Americans, I have to ask – “How can we not?”

Posted by Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Maital and Adam Baldachin are in the middle of a year of service in Mbale, Uganda. Maital is there on the Princeton University Labouisse Fellowship to expand a library that she began in the summer of 2005 and Adam is traveling as an American Jewish World Service fellow and the Masort Olami Representative. They can be reached by visiting their blog.

For the past three months, we have had to make sure that our net is tucked between the bed frame and the mattress before we go to sleep. We moved to Uganda in July and every night since we have slept under a mosquito net. Uganda has a very high prevalence of malaria and having seen friends suffer from the disease as well as the side effects of the treatment, we will do what we can to avoid contracting it. One relatively simple measure is to sleep under a insecticide treated net not only because they keep out the mosquitoes but because they kill them as well. We also appreciate the net for all of the other things it keeps out of our bed.

Sleeping under a net is a big deal here. Just the other week during a walk through the village, one of our tour guides, the local pastor and also trained community health worker, proudly pointed out the nets that he had distributed to the poorest in the community. We entered people’s mud huts with grass thatched roofs and noticed that even over beds where five family members slept hung a mosquito net. Also, for a few weeks, the government newspaper ran a cartoon emphasizing the importance of sleeping under insecticide-treated nets. The people in our community often talk of the fact that nets not only reduce the incidence of malaria to those who sleep underneath them, but to the community at large. For anyone who has suffered from malaria or worse seen someone die because of it, sleeping under a mosquito net is definitely worthwhile!

---------------------------------------------------------

Today the World Health Organization came out with data which suggests the remarkable effectiveness of nets. Follow the coverage at Washington Post or New York Times.

Want to help?

The Union for Reform Judaism is excited to be participating in Nothing But Nets, an initiative to help limit the spread of malaria by donating bed nets to communities in Sub-Saharan African.  For $10 you can donate a net right now and start a Nothing But Nets team to encourage your friends to do the same thing.  The Union has committed to donating 50,000 nets to Chad and the Central African Republic. 

Learn more about the program at www.urj.org/nets.

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"America is opposing genocide in Sudan,” President Bush said to widespread applause when he delivered his State of the Union address this week.  It seemed to me that his vague use of the present tense is a perfect reflection of the state of the campaign to address the tragedy of Darfur: it’s just there, not making progress, not moving forward, just existing.

Shmuel Rosner, the always-interesting Washington Bureau Chief of Haaretz, has a fascinating, and sad, article in Slate this week (read it here).  He writes:

The campaign to save Darfur is alive, but it is no longer kicking. You could say that it has achieved all its stated goals: public awareness, international pressure, congressional action, the administration's involvement. Well, all but one: The crisis in Darfur is not yet solved, and the campaign to save Darfur is running out of options.

And more pointedly:

So, here's the problem of the campaign to save Darfur: Public interest has waned, the simple options have all been exhausted, the political machinery is mired in the election process, and other problems—Pakistan, Iran—have taken over the front pages.

I think Rosner is right.  In many ways, our work (and that of so many others) on Darfur has been a success.  I think it’s fair to say that the situation in Darfur is near the top of the Jewish community’s agenda. We have spoken to, written to, and met with our Members of Congress on Darfur.  We have played a role in pushing the President to take a firm stand.  But, in another, the way that counts at the end of the day, success seems as distant as ever.

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