The excerpt below is from a recent Op-Ed piece in the Jewish Journal by Susan Freudenheim:
Each year, we gather with family and friends for our Passover seder. We lift the matzo and remember how we were once slaves in the land of Egypt. We talk about the blood, locusts, boils, hail and so on, then we dig in to our “festive meal.” We remember, and then we eat. How lucky are we?
This year at Jewish World Watch (jww.org) — the anti-genocide organization where I serve — we are going beyond remembering the traditional Exodus story of the Hebrew slaves. Our Passover conversation also remembers the fleeing, homeless refugees and displaced people worldwide whose number, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has officially topped 65 million. They, too, are innocent people who’ve lost their homes and their livelihoods through violence perpetrated, in many cases, by outright hostility from their own governments.
We must ask ourselves: Who is Moses for today’s refugees? And where is the matzo — and the manna — for the famine-afflicted people attempting to find food for their children and themselves in civil war-infested South Sudan? I call out South Sudan, in particular, because it is one of the countries in which Jewish World Watch has long invested. So, at our Passover meal, we will remember that, despite the efforts of Jewish World Watch and many other international nongovernmental organizations, innocent people in South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, are dying of starvation because of a senseless civil war.
Who will be Moses for the people of South Sudan? Who will save lives by offering support and sustenance? It’s up to you and me to help fill in the gap. Jewish World Watch is embarking on an emergency campaign to help respond to this crisis.
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