New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature

Darfur becomes focus of ADL seder

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

The 6,000-year-old tale of Exodus combined dramatically with the current tragedy of genocide in Darfur as 150 people from all over the state came together April 4 at an interfaith seder sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League.

Guests from some 29 different community and ethnic groups took part in the annual event, held at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark. Participants took turns reciting the list of Ten Plagues in seven languages — English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, and Hebrew.
But it was the tragedy in Darfur — where the Sudanese government has been accused of fomenting a genocide — that transformed the evening from an interfaith celebration to a call to conscience.

“Even though we sit comfortably here in Newark, we remain concerned with the genocidal campaign that threatens to wipe out whole communities of African tribal farmers in Darfur,” said Bill Davidson of Watchung, New Jersey regional ADL president. “We must maintain pressure on our elected officials for increased peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance in Darfur, and we must ask President Bush to promote intervention through an international peacekeeping force. In the face of injustice, we cannot remain silent.”

Rabbi Eliot Malomet of the Highland Park Conservative Temple and Center, who led the service, also linked the Passover ritual to current events. “It is important to tell your story, and the more you tell it the better,” he said. “Whenever we see someone who is starving, whenever we see someone who is a victim of genocide, a victim of a political campaign of torture, we have to identify with that person.”

Steven Jude Tietjen, a senior at South Plainfield High School, who said he chose his middle name in homage to the Catholic patron saint of lost causes, read from a specially prepared portion of the Haggada on the ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The passage related that situation to the Holocaust and to atrocities in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Cambodia.

Tietjen told NJ Jewish News he has been interested in the subject of genocide since he read a short biography of Anne Frank when he was in the fourth grade.

The student said he plans to be active in the Save Darfur campaign when he begins opera studies next fall at the Carnegie-Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh. He was concerned with “a loss of humanity and how we can regain that humanity. Hatred is not innate. It is taught to you. If you teach someone early enough that hatred should not be allowed to thrive, then you can stop it. But in the world we live in, hatred is very prevalent. It is not hard to say ‘Never again,’ but it is hard to make it never again.”

For a third year, Carlos Hunter, a rector at the First Baptist Church of Woodbridge, and his wife, Doretha Hunter, attended the ADL seder.

“I really enjoy the fellowshipping together,” he told NJJN.

“I see people of every race coming together and enjoying each other,” she added. This is a great event.”

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