CJC dedicates a Shabbat to Darfur

As part of its ongoing effort to ensure a definitive end to the genocide in Darfur, Canadian Jewish Congress is partnering with synagogues across Canada on January 22/23 for Darfur Shabbat.
Darfur Shabbat asks rabbis and congregants from one end of the country to the other to dedicate a portion of their regular Shabbat service to stopping the genocide for good by focusing on what the Canadian Jewish community can do to help.

“We think that now is a great time to heighten and redouble our efforts to end the genocide so that it is once and for all done,” said Benjamin Shinewald, CJC’s National Executive Director and General Counsel.

While there have been encouraging developments in the Darfur region in the past six months, pressure must be kept up. To remain silent while there is still violence going on would go against a major tenet of Judaism not to ignore the suffering of others. It would also ignore our responsibility to perform tikkun olam (“to repair the world”).
"The idea was to get rabbis from across Canada, and to get rabbis from the three streams of Judaism,” Shinewald said.

Darfur Shabbat is taking place only a few days before the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which symbolizes the end of the Holocaust. CJC’s intent is to use the date to say that the world’s apathy to the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust means that as Jews we must speak out against what is going on in Darfur. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>