TORONTO — Last week, congregations in at least 12 Jewish communities across the country were preparing for Canadian Jewish Congress’ “Darfur Shabbat,” which took place this past weekend.

 Rabbi Reuven Bulka

Had organizers known that it would take place so soon after the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, they would have planned differently, Rabbi Reuven Bulka said in a phone interview from his office at Congregation Machzikei Hadas, an Orthodox synagogue in Ottawa. He noted that CJC has sent mass e-mails about earthquake relief efforts to the Jewish community, which has “geared up” to help the survivors.

However, Rabbi Bulka added, plans for Darfur Shabbat were in the works for months, and the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region represents “an ongoing humanitarian issue… that hasn’t been front and centre.

“We’re talking over half a million who have been killed,” said Rabbi Bulka, immediate past CJC co-chair.

The rabbi joined his Conservative colleague Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl of Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation and Reform Rabbi Philip Bregman of Temple Sholom in Vancouver to encourage their fellow rabbis to participate in Darfur Shabbat.

“Remaining silent in the face of the Darfur genocide would be to deny Judaism’s core concept of not standing idly by while others suffer,” they stated in a news release.

As of last Thursday, CJC knew of participating congregations in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, London, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Fredericton and St. John’s.

As well, said Benjamin Shinewald, the organization’s national executive director and general counsel, “students have picked this up with some gusto. There are services and Shabbat programming at Hillels and Jewish student associations across the country.”

Rabbi Bulka said he and his colleagues would “urge people to write to their MPs, so hopefully Darfur will get back on the radar screen [and] be addressed” through international pressure that “so people there can live in peace.”

When reached last Thursday, the rabbi was planning to talk about Darfur in his sermon on Saturday, highlighting the connection Jews have to suffering. “The Torah reading of the week deals with the agonizing suffering we went through in Egypt, and the beginning of redemption.”

As well, he added, “I won’t hesitate to say that the fact we reacted as we did to what happened in Haiti showed how caring we are as Jews and as Canadians.”

Amichai (Ami) Wise, a 32-year-old Ottawa lawyer, is chair of CJC’s Darfur action committee, which has been revitalized in the past year and now has almost 40 members.

“I do believe instinctively that this is an important issue to take up as a Jew,” said Wise, a native of Toronto who is the grandson of four Holocaust survivors.

The committee’s first initiative last year was the launch, with actor Mia Farrow, of the online publication Darfur: A Jewish Response. As well, said Shinewald, “we’re trying to develop programs that will engage the Jewish community more deeply in Darfur advocacy and lobbying government to bring about a definitive end to the conflict in Darfur.”

Wise said he hoped that Darfur Shabbat will increase overall awareness of the situation in Darfur within the Jewish community. “It’s still a dire situation for a lot of Darfuris. If the Jewish community continues to be aware, then I believe we could eventually put pressure on the Canadian government to act in a way that will improve the lives of Darfuris… perhaps to help reach a lasting and peaceful resolution.”