Actually, the theme of this dinner plus Shabbat was about the Jews of Ireland. Since there have never been a really great number of Jews in Ireland, Temple Israel of Greater Miami had a smaller number of diners who attended than previous such services attracted. However, while the information was scanty, the “Irish” food was good and plenty. I chose the corned beef and cabbage. The food and the “lecture” plus the printed information were not the whole of the evening.
Following dinner, we went into the Sanctuary and the Service followed the usual combination of the Cantorial Soloist with the assistance of the Rabbi singing and tapping on a drum. The Service was a short version of the traditional Friday evening rituals. But it was the “Leader” plus a printed “responsive reading by the Congregation that brought us away from the Emerald Isle and plunged us deep into Somalia and Darfur the site of a genocide that is ongoing even while we ate and sang.
The point of the responsive reading which turned out to be the Rabbi’s sermon without our participating with the words printed out for us, was the size of the genocide in a country the size of Texas and in a place that “you can’t get to from anywhere”. The thrust of Rabbi Chefitz’s message was that we Jews are deeply involved in THE Holocaust where six million of our co-religionists died in a war where an additional six million non-Jews were sacrificed on a pagan altar of war.
The world knows of the Darfur genocide of African against African. There is the added twist of Arab Janjaweed murderers who kill the men and drive the women and children from their homes. The thousands of victims of this genocide suffer each day and the world knowingly does nothing. We were asked to pray for these poor people. At the same time, the Rabbi asked us to be very careful to think about what we were praying for and questioned our willingness to follow a formula where we demand acts that will not actually stop this genocide and prevent it from happening again – much like the NEVER AGAIN slogan of Jews who will not go willingly into the slaughter houses provided them by the Nazis and their allies.
The point was made crystal clear by the Rabbi reading the words for us on the responsive reading. What can we really do about a place that you cannot get to where these atrocities are daily fare? Think carefully what you pray for – it is not enough obviously – you must also act. But, can you really act to help these abandoned people of Darfur? Who came to OUR aid when they were killing us?
The service ended with the melody of “Danny Boy” used to sing the closing prayer. It was nicely done and left us with much to think about.