On a warm morning on June 7, I walked with my friend, Gabe Ferrick, to raise money to help end the genocide in Darfur. Although Gabe, myself and many of our friends are Jewish teenagers at Congregation Shomrei Torah in Santa Rosa, many people of different races, ages and religions from the community showed up to help support Gabe to stop the horrible genocide occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan.
In all, more than 100 people turned out to help in this project that was co-sponsored by Gabe and Congregation Shomrei Torah?s Social Action Committee.
In the opening minutes before we started to walk, many inspiring people gave short speeches, not only about how the walk we were about to embark on would help many people in Darfur but how to help the people experiencing their own version of genocide around the world. Rabbi George Gittleman was one of those speakers; he told all of us that there are many, many ways to pray. In the temple, we pray with our voices, reading and chanting the many melodies in our prayer books, with our hands, clapping along to the rhythm, and many other ways. ?Today, you will all be praying with your feet,? Rabbi George said.
With every resounding sound of the soles of our shoes hitting the pavement, we were getting closer and closer to stopping the genocide in Darfur. It didn?t matter that we were moving at the pace of a snail to stopping the genocide. It just mattered that we were all doing our part in trying to stop it and not turning our backs to what was going on. We were doing this because our Jewish faith talks about something called, ?tikkun olam,? which means, ?repairing the world.?
As I walked from the temple in Bennett Valley on the 3-mile march through the streets of Santa Rosa, I could not help but think what it must be like for people in the Sudan experiencing the genocide first-hand. What they go through every day is like us being thrust from our houses into the plains of Nevada, a place with new laws, new climate and many more changes we are not used to. We would be crammed into refugee camps, where the quality of life was poor. We would be cooking our dinners over fire, living in worn-down, dirty cloth tents and trying to find clean drinking water. Our camps would be surrounded by the militants who forced us out of our homes, threatening to harm us if we left the safe boundaries of the camp trying to look for supplies like firewood.
Before the walk, all participating in it were asked to gather pledges from friends and family, which would go directly toward efforts to stopping the genocide. Gabe?s team goal was $7,200. We are very proud that we raised more than $9,000. Now, that amount was raised through a small network of friends. I wonder what we would be able to accomplish if people all over the United States or even all over the world would participate and help raise money. Would this be enough to end the genocide in Darfur, or even genocide all over the world? Even though the walk has already happened, interested people can still go online to find out more information and/or contribute to this effort. Go to www.walkfordarfur.org.
Gabriel Rosen-Duran, 13, lives in Petaluma.
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