Dear Friends:
This past Wednesday we were honored to hear a very powerful talk by Ruth Messinger, Executive Director of the American Jewish World Service, on the nightmare of the genocide occurring in Darfur.  The talk was sponsored by InterAct Cleveland and the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Community Federation. The statistics are staggering, and we'll relate some of the key ones below.  But we wanted to let you know the emotional impact that the talk had on us.

As I watched President Barack Obama speaking in Cairo a feeling of hope began to rise in me. I thought, “Yes, and how do his words play out in my neighborhood, in my city, in our region? He’s laying out a world view for us. Let’s bring it on home.” While the President focused specifically on relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims, I think and hope he meant to broaden the scope of his remarks to include all religious traditions and perhaps even the growing number who have begun to identify themselves as “spiritual” but not belonging to any particular tradition and thus broadening the goal to reach all those who subscribe to the one rule of which he spoke – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.