Clifford Goldkind on behalf of the Jewish Community Relations Council, has organized a Save Darfur Banner Campaign to continue spreading awareness about the ongoing tragedy occurring in the Sudan, by putting 3ft X 8ft awareness banners in front of houses of worship throughout our area and the nation. To contact him about this project email Cliff.Goldkind@ShalomDC.org

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On April 30th, 2006, thousands of people came to Washington, DC to rally on behalf of the victims of Darfur, Sudan. Although the rally is over, our work is not done. If we are going to stop the genocide, we have so much left to do. The major organizers behind the Save Darfur Coalition and within the Jewish community, including the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America, are now discussing the next steps in the campaign and how we might sustain the momentum built by the incredible organizing that has occurred in the past few months. What we in the Jewish community do or do not do matters. People’s lives hang in the balance.

Genocide is taking place rigth now in Darfur. At least 400,000 are dead—victims of airplane attacks, marauding, and sexual violence, as well as the spreading malnutrition, dehydration and diseases that are engulfing the camps where people have sought refuge. Two million African Muslim farmers have been uprooted from their homes by their own government and the Janjaweed militia it supports. More than three million people who were subsistence farmers have been torn from their homes and their livelihoods. As the world stands by, women are raped, children murdered and villages burned to the ground.

Our tradition proclaims that “Whosoever saves the life of a single person is considered to have saved an entire world.” It teaches the transcendent value of even a single human life, a value rooted in the fact that each person is created in the image of God. The situation in Darfur poignantly evokes the Biblical injunction, “Do not stand idly by while the blood of your neighbor is shed” (Leviticus 19:16). Our history teaches us the bitter lesson of what happens when the world is silent in the face of such massive atrocities. We will continue to work in every way we can to halt the genocide in the Sudan.

The April 30th rally in Washington, DC was a project of the national Save Darfur Coalition that has brought together over 150 faith-based, advocacy and humanitarian aid organizations, including the OU and the RCA, to launch a campaign to stop the killing in Sudan. The campaign calls on President Bush to use the power of his office to bring about an effective multinational intervention in Darfur. We must continue to act to stop the genocide in Darfur.

For more information on Darfur or on the Save Darfur Coalition’s efforts to stop the genocide, please visit www.ajws.org/darfur. We will update this page as more information on the Save Darfur Coalition’s efforts becomes available.

Meanwhile, for talking points and background information on Darfur, click here.

For suggestions and resources for helping to educate others about the crisis, click here.

To become more invovled in the Jewish community’s organized efforts, click here.