Darfur Isn't Excused by an "Eglah Arufah"

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5766 
October 3rd, 2005 
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor 

Deuteronomy, Chapter 21, records an incident that was clearly not unusual in Biblical times, or in our times. An unidentified corpse was found, and the perpetrator was unknown. Torah is not interested in CSI and forensics to determine who did it. Elsewhere there are laws about sin and punishment. Here there is a different focus. Instead, the elders and judges would come out to the corpse and determine which city was closest. Upon that city was placed responsibility for permitting a society in which this could take place, for enabling, allowing, an environment where this would happen. The elders of that city would bring a heifer that was innocent, had never worked and never had a yoke on its neck. In order to expiate the blood shed on their land, the elders would break the neck of the heifer in a valley. They would then wash their hands over the neck of the heifer and proclaim this oath: "Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Forgive, O Lord, thy people Israel, whom Thou has redeemed and suffer not innocent blood to remain in the midst of Thy people Israel." The Torah concludes, "And the blood shall be forgiven them."

I suppose that we would run out of heifers to offer, if every city and municipality had to operate under the halacha of the Torah. It is not a question whether they did it in Biblical times. I don't know. Our religious literature is not written in the form of case law. God, through His words in Torah, clearly indicates a level of responsibility for the nature of society, the moral or immoral climate, and its consequences upon the innocent - their death. The front, back and middle pages of our newspapers indicate that there is much for which to be responsible. Maybe we could shock the Richmond metropolitan area into a higher level of awareness, if they had to offer an eglah arufah, the proper title for the heifer, on the bank of the James. That would make the front-pages! 

Yet, without the ritual of elders, judges and heifer, without the formal declaration, the vast numbers of people of Europe made a similar denial in the days after World War II. They said: We didn't do it. We didn't kill the Jews. We didn't know what was going on. As recorded in the annals of the recently deceased Simon Wiesenthal, there were and still are those who denied that it even happened. They denied responsibility. They denied culpability. They denied accountability. It didn't happen. Or, they didn't know it was happening. They couldn't stop it if they knew. They didn't see the trains laden with Jews. They didn't smell the smell of our burning flesh. Nobody saw. Nobody knew. Nobody spoke. Nobody. And we know that the Allies wouldn't lift a finger to stop it, even when they knew. Israel internalized that lesson, best illustrated by Entebbe. I only need to say the name. That says it all.

We call that chapter of our history the Shoah, a Biblical term to indicate that an animal on the altar was completely consumed by fire, leaving just its ashes. While Jews died many different ways in the Shoah, this term has become our particular language. Translated as 'holocaust,' the Hebrew, our language, with its internal connotations, resonates better than the English.

It is important to differentiate the Shoah from genocide. Surely genocide is the mass killing of a population, but it does not have the premeditation combined with the ideology combined with the extensive plan embedded with centuries of hatred of an innocent neighbor. While having the commonality of the mass deaths of innocents, there is a distinct difference between the Shoah and genocide. Yet, they are both horrible. They both show the depravity of humanity. For both, I believe, all the eglot arufot in the world, the plural for the heifer, could never expiate the deaths. And in both the world sits silent, and in irreconcilable mimicry of the Torah's words proclaim: "Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it."

As we begin the New Year, for the most part, at ease and in personal comfort, there is a genocide occurring this very moment, even as I speak. It is happening in Darfur in the Sudan. You probably couldn't find it on a map. Then again, who could have found our shtetls? And except for platitudes the world is silent. And we are silent. I challenge your conscience. I dare us to ask God for life and all the good things, and for us to be silent. I dare you to invoke the Shoah, and be silent when others are the target of genocide. It is hypocritical of us.

My colleague, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, wrote a moving piece for the Rabbis of America to use this Yamim Noraim. It is disseminated by the American World Service which brings Jewish values to bear in the global fight for human rights. Rabbi Schulweis' words are more eloquent that any paraphrasing, so I now share with you the message he composed, for me to use tonight.

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What have we to do with a people we do not know, in a land we have not visited? What have we to do with people of another faith, another culture, another civilization? Have we Jews not sufficient burdens of our own? Is the struggle against anti-Semitism not enough for us? Are we so numerous that we can take on the suffering of others not our kinsmen?

We Jews see with ancient eyes. We have seen the torture, the starvation, the death by disease, the rapes, the abandonment by the civilized world before.

We Jews possess a terrible knowledge, an awesome wisdom we gained not out of books, but out of our own bodies. A knowledge out of the testimony of numbers seared into the skin of living human beings and the stench of burned flesh.

We see with ancient eyes: We are eye witnesses to the consequences of the callousness of lethal silence. We offer testimony to the morbid symptoms of apathy, the moral laryngitis that strangles the voice of protest.

We see with ancient eyes: Embassies shut down, visa denied, borders sealed off, refugee ships returned to the ports that transported the persecuted into the furnaces of hell. And we know what happens when churches are complicit with the killers of the dream.

With ancient eyes we see Darfur with a shock of recognition. We experience a collective deja vu even as we speak. More than two million frightened souls fleeing homes in Darfur/400,000 helpless people murdered/the terror of the Janjaweed, which in Arabic is derived from "jan"--which means "evil", and "jawed"--which means "horsemen," soldiers on horses with swords, whips and truncheons, beating down a people and trampling them.

We heard before the treacherous excuses, the lying alibis, the rationalizations from church and state and international bodies.

We count six million alibis. They said: What can we do? We are too few, too weak, too exhausted, the enemy too implacable. Do we not have a prior responsibility to our own church, to our own parish, to our own congregants? Are these reports really genocide or just propaganda?

We Jews remember what we expected sixty years ago. We prayed and hoped for a cry/ a protest from out of the basilica, from out of the nave, from out of the cathedral, some proclamation of a fast, some decision to march in public, some demonstration on to the streets and marketplaces, some sob of conscience that could pierce the hardness of the heart: Can we do less? Like the Psalmist we cry to God into the ears of man: "Rouse Yourself--why do You sleep? Awaken--why do You hide Your face and ignore our affliction?"

Friends, October 6, 2005 is the day reserved in the Jewish calendar to remember Gedaliah who gave his life to save the remnant of the Judean kingdom after the destruction of the First Temple. We ask Jews and Gentiles all over the world to participate in the International Solidarity Fast for Darfur.

Like Gedaliah in the days of Jeremiah, we are called today to save the remnant of the people of Darfur who are suffering genocide at the hands of the Sudanese regime and the Janjaweed militias they armed. What better way to honor the legacy of Gedaliah than to show that we, too, are willing to make a sacrifice to end another people's suffering. So on October 6 do the Jewish thing. Fast for the day or give up a meal or a luxury item and donate the money you save to an organization providing humanitarian aid to the people of Darfur. Let's show that Rosh HaShanah 5766 marked the end of genocide in Darfur and the beginning of a world that cares for every human life.

Attached to this sermon which was posted on our website and sent out on the listerv this afternoon are links to the American Jewish World Service and Darfur Fast. Through these links you may sign the petitions to our government and the United Nations. You may donate funds toward the refugees in Darfur, to help save their lives and rescue them. We add the words in the Amidah "Zochreynu L'chayyim v' kotveynu b'sefer hachayyim" – "Remember us for life and inscribe us for life." May that prayer ascend not only for us, not only for our children, not only for Israel. We our eyes be open to all who are afflicted in the world. May genocide end. May killing cease throughout all God's kingdom for all His Children. May we not be silent.       

Amen.

For more information and a list of organizations to donate to see: www.darfurfast.org .

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