It's been eventful since the last post and I will catch up soon. In the interim, please read the following:

Dear friends and colleagues, (sorry to those on both lists)

For those of you who have the chance to speak at synagogue this year
during the high holy days, I would strongly encourage you to consider
making Darfur/Sudan one of your subjects.

To date, as many as 50,000-100,000 civilians have been killed and 1.2
million people have been driven from their homes. Many of these
refugees, now in camps in Chad and Sudan, report the raping of women
and girls, the torching of villages, the destruction of food supplies
and the deliberate poisoning of water sources by the Janjaweed. [this
comes from the Save Darfur Coalition]

What was most convincing to me was learning that for the first time in
its history, the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum has declared a "genocide emergency" in the Sudan,
indicating that genocide is imminent or is actually happening in the
Darfur region.

I do not have access to any special information about what is going on,
but I have put together some of the links/resources that I have come
across. I hope they are helpful to you should you choose to speak
about this crisis. I do have a one-page double sided handout from the
Holocaust Museum that would be appropriate for distribution at
congregations, which I would be more than willing to make available for
you to copy. I would also like to get my hands on talks that others
have given.

At the end of this note, I have listed a couple of high holy day
liturgy tie-ins that have been recommended to me by other rabbinic
students. I am sure you can think of others, and I would be happy to
hear of them.

Justus Baird
*************

RESOURCES:

The American Jewish World Service (AJWS) is a great place to start:
http://ajws.org/index.cfm?section_id=8

The Save Darfur Coalition, which includes the URJ and AJWS, is also a
great place to start: http://www.savedarfur.org

Information from the Holocaust Memorial Museum, which includes latest
news:
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/sudan/darfur/index.php

The Religious Action Center has a good, concise action alert with
additional resource links at http://www.rac.org/issues/sudangen.html

The Reform Movement has created a Relief Fund for Sudan
- http://urj.org/pr/2004/040813/index.cfm?
- http://urj.org/relief/

For a good introduction on the situation, see this New Yorker article
entitled "Dying in Darfur" (thanks to Aaron Dorfman for the
recommendation) by Samantha Power, who won a Pulitzer for her book on
America's historical indifference to genocide. The article can be read
at:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040830fa_fact1


HIGH HOLY DAY LITURGY TIE-INS FOR TALKING ABOUT THE DARFUR GENOCIDE

* Unetaneh Tokef: how is it different for us American Jews to think
about who will live and who will die, and for those who live in
Darfur/Sudan right now? [Marc Gitler, Yeshivat Hovevei Torah]

* Haftarah reading YK morning: Isaiah 58:1-14 (p347 in GOR). "Is this
the fast I have chosen? A day of self-affliction?.... But is not
*this* the fast I have chosen: to unlock the shackles of injustice, to
loosen the ropes of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to tear
every yoke apart?" [Julie Roth, JTS]