CT JEWS SAY ‘NEVER AGAIN’ AS THEY ATTEND D.C. RALLY FOR DARFUR
By Stacey Dresner
Connecticut Jewish Ledger, CT
May 4 2006
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Just days after Yom HaShoah, the annual
commemoration of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust,
hundreds of Connecticut Jews made their way to Washington, D.C. to
protest another genocide – the one occurring now in Darfur, Sudan.
These participants were among tens of thousands who made their way to
the nation’s capital last Sunday to participate in the “Save Darfur:
Rally to Stop Genocide” on the National Mall near the United States
Capitol.
A large percentage of the rally participants were from the Jewish
community.
Toting signs saying, “Never again, again” and “Not on our watch,”
Jews representing Hillel groups and days schools, JCCs, synagogues
and Hadassah chapters, all came from around the country to attend
the rally, organized by the Save Darfur Coalition.
Even Sudanese participants noticed a disproportionate Jewish presence
at the rally and in relief efforts in general. “The people in Darfur
know very well and welcome the support of the American Jewish
community,” said Iessa Dahia, a Darfuri now living in Portland,
Maine. “They know the Jewish community has been through that in the
Holocaust. The Jewish community has said we cannot allow this to
happen again. That’s why they are here more than any other community.”
The rally’s speakers included Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel,
Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Services,
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of
Reform Judaism, Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., the Rev. Al Sharpton, and
actor George Clooney. Some of the most poignant speakers were Sudanese
representatives like Simon Deng, who recently walked from New York
City to Washington to call attention to the situation in his homeland.
Many of those attending the rally from Connecticut were members of
the state’s Jewish community, which has spoken out strongly against
the genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan. In the past
three years, more than 400,000 people have been killed and more
than 2.5 million have been displaced due to actions by the Sudan
government-backed Arab militias against Black Africans in the Darfur
region.
Famine and disease are now endemic in the region, where refugees
subsist in makeshift displaced persons camps. Officials in Chad
nervously monitor the conflict, which they worry will spill over to
their country.
“I think it is critical that we all went to the rally because we
had to draw attention to an incredibly serious genocide that is
taking place in Darfur,” said Dr. Milton Wallach, chair of the Jewish
Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater New
Haven. “It is incumbent upon us as Jews, remembering our own history,
to not forget what we went through and that the slogan, ‘Never Again’
has to have real meaning…By going down we were making a statement
that never again should this happen, and not only should it end in
Darfur, but it should never start in other places.”
Speaking out
Buses headed for the D.C. rally took off as early as 4 a.m. that
morning from synagogues from around Connecticut, including Emanuel
Synagogue in West Hartford, Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden,
and Temple Israel in Westport.
Rabbi Herbert Brockman of Mishkan Israel took 60 people on his bus –
congregation members, six members of the nearby First Presbyterian
Church, and a dozen members of Mishkan Israel’s confirmation class.
Before the rally the group went to tour the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
“We connected the two,” Brockman said. “Having been through the
experience of genocide – in fact the word having been created because
of that experience…it was very important as Jews that we speak out
against the first genocide of the 21st century.”
Thirty-eight people went on Emanuel Synagogue bus – both members of
the congregation and some students from the University of Hartford.
“Our local effort was truly grass-roots. Our members came forward
and said, ‘We want to run a bus.’ Louise Rosenberg and Jamie Zeff,
members of B’Yadeynu, our social action committee, organized the bus
and got the word out,” said Rabbi David Small of the Emanuel Synagogue.
In all, four buses left for the rally from the Hartford area, two
busloads left from the JCC of New Haven for the rally, and around
40 members of the greater Hartford Jewish community, as well as
other members of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, a group
of secular and non-secular organizations from across the state, flew
out from Bradley International Airport to participate in the rally.
Robert Yass, chair of the JCRC of the Jewish Federation of Greater
Hartford, flew down to Washington to be a part of the rally.
“I was impressed by the number of people willing to come down and
express their concern about people different from themselves,” Yass
said. “I think it always helps when we can express concern about
an issue beyond what might be considered ‘our issues’ as a Jewish
advocacy organization. And I think it is important to engage with the
wider community and supportive of issues when we have a common agenda.”
The Hebrew High School of New England sent its own bus to the rally,
filled with 45 students, and a bus sponsored by Young Judea New England
picked up a number of local teens on their way to the nation’s capital.
“I feel a big sense of responsibility, not only as a Jew, but as
a person. I feel like everybody has a responsibility to help out
if there is a mass genocide going on,” said Carly Abrabanel, 16,
of Springfield, Mass., a junior at Hebrew High School of New England.
This was the first rally Abrabanel had ever attended, and she came
back inspired to do more. She is now selling wrist bands to benefit
Save Darfur.
“I thought the rally was really amazing,” she said. “It was incredible
that there were so many people working toward the same cause.”
‘A feeling of unity’
Much of the work done to organize rally-goers in Connecticut was
done by members of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, which
counts as its members the Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and Western
Connecticut Jewish Community Relations Councils, the Connecticut
Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation
Association of Connecticut the Archdiocese of Hartford’s Office of
Black Catholic Ministries, the Waterbury NAACP, and the Episcopal
Archdiocese. Representatives from each of these groups attended
the rally.
“I thought the rally was extremely well-planned,” said Robert Fishman,
executive director of JFACT. “It was the combination of music, the
atmosphere, certainly the wide-range of speakers, but also the people
in the crowd. There was a delegation of Sudanese students with their
own signs. There were lots of different clergy from Sikhs to Armenian
Catholics to Protestants, Evangelicals, and rabbis.
“I am just glad to have gone,” Fishman said. “I think it is something
we will remember. I am just hopeful we made a difference.”
Lauri Lowell, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of
the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, was struck by the number
of clergy at the rally.
“It was a very spiritual event,” she said. “There was lots of prayer
at the beginning. I think there was a sense that we were asking G-d’s
blessing for this and that what is going on in Darfur is not only
an outrage to the greater community but to G-d as well. There was a
beautiful feeling of unity.”
Rabbi Eric Polokoff of Congregation B’nai Israel in Southbury, who
has been active in the Darfur issue, attended the rally with his wife,
his 13-year-old daughter Ariel, and other members of his congregation.
“I think that there was a sense at the rally that you were around
other people who had come out to Washington and really cared about
this. You could feel this empathy and compassion. The absolute rallying
cry was ‘Never again,’ and how it somehow now has to actually mean
“Never again.'”
–Rachel Silverman and David Silverman of the JTA contributed to
this report.