Darfur Message
March 16, 2006
Plymouth Church

by Rabbi Sim Glaser

Click here for a printable version

Passover time comes in a few weeks for the Jewish people. A bittersweet holiday, literally. Bitter herb, Sweet wine, bitter slavery, sweet freedom, tortured history, delicious deliverance. That’s kind of the Jewish experience summed up. Bitterness, sweet salvation, celebration. Usually involving food. Oh, and with one important addition. It happened to us, and we cannot let it happen to us again, nor can we avert our eyes while any other people suffers the outrages of oppression, slavery, genocide such as did our ancestors.

Had our own history of oppression and genocide, and the world’s history of oppression and genocide ended in 16th century BCE Egypt, Passover would be nothing more than a quaint celebration of an ancient, memorable but only moderately relevant event. But Pharaohs continued to thrive throughout human history, in the guise of Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, and Milosevic; and in the armies of the Cambodians, the Turkish in their slaughter of the Armenians, the Nazis, Rwanda, the Janjaweed in the Sudan.

Passover reminds the Jewish people that the ancient story is more than relevant history. As William Faulkner once said: The past is never dead; it's not even past. The Passover story of an oppressed desperate people crying out for deliverance is a current event.

But is this genocide? And is this a Jewish concern? In a document seized from a Janjaweed official was an order cited to commanders and security officers to “change the demography of Darfur” making it void of African tribes, and encouraging killing, burning villages and farms and raping and subduing a substandard population. How reminiscent of the worst crime against humanity in the 20th century – the Holocaust, at which time laws were established to do the same thing to Jews in Europe. Officially sanctioned actions against a segment of the population with the intention of eliminating them as a people.

The Jewish people has a particular talent for recognizing exactly what happens when a world turns its back on genocide. Hitler, when challenged as to what would be the world’s reaction to the final solution once remarked: Does anyone remember the Armenians? Referring to the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915. About this Hitler was right. Very few did remember the Armenian slaughter only decades earlier. And who talks about Cabodia anymore? Even Rwanda was out of the news very shortly after the massacres ceased, only reappearing when Hollywood took notice. The world wants to put such incidents behind us quickly because they are painful reminders of how off-centered the world is.

I could quote you scores of Biblical references from your tradition, from our tradition – Don’t stand idly by as your neighbor bleeds; care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan in your midst; what is hateful to you do not do to another.

I could also talk about how the evil Pharaoh of the Exodus story was twisted in the win by an all powerful God that reigned plagues upon Egypt and cleft oceans in half to allow the oppressed to go free. How the very earth opened to swallow the foes of ancient Israel.

But that might give you the impression that this is still the way the world operates. That prayer alone will combat the evils violence of racism and intolerance. Or that the cry that comes up from a large mass of people is heard on high.

The Jewish tradition teaches that since we have become heirs to the moral tradition, the ethical guidance of the Almighty Spirit, our very hands have become God’s 10 billion hands. 10 billion hands that could write postcards, or punch the computer keys daily sending messages to Washington and to local legislators; 10 billion wrists that might sport the green armbands; 10 billion eyes that see the news reports almost instantly arriving from the scene of the crime; 10 billion feet that could march at the state capitol or in Washington, 10 billion mouths that incessantly nag the waking world that genocide is occurring in our own lifetime. 10 billion souls testifying this coming Spring of Easter and Passover that this is no Biblical History, this is no metaphoric mythology.

This is Sudan. This is Darfur. This is today.

I firmly believe that the cry of the oppressed is issuing forth, and that you and I are actually hearing it and our souls are being rocked feverishly and painfully. The only way to achieve integrity, the only to line up our faith, values, consciences and historic wisdom is through continuing action, and I urge you to do it.

I hope you will join us at Temple Israel two weeks from tonight to write postcards, make phone calls, send internet messages and screen the vivid compelling film Darfur Diaries: Message from Home.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven. The time to act is now.