AJWS urges 'partnership in global justice'

By Seth Mandel
The Jewish State
Former President Bill Clinton praised the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), and the global Jewish community in general, for its worldwide giving and embracing of its social responsibility June 13 at the AJWS "Partners in Global Justice" event.

"The Jewish Diaspora has always been in the giving business," Clinton told an audience of more than 1,000 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. "I don't think Israel would exist today were it not, and because of the instruction of your faith to repair the world, you do it everywhere. And the echo effects are enormous."

AJWS is an international development organization committed to fighting hunger and poverty, as well as advocating human rights. The organization is currently invested in its Darfur awareness program called the Darfur Action Campaign, and much of the night's discussion involved Darfur, as well as HIV/AIDS and natural disaster recovery.

AJWS President Ruth Messenger, who was recently honored at Raritan Valley Community College's "Make a Difference" reception during the three-day "Learning Through Experience" Holocaust and Genocide program, told The Jewish State after the program that she was pleased with the sincere attention the speakers and honorees gave the global crises on which the organization focuses so much time and effort.

"I was delighted with the serious attention that every speaker gave to what this work is all about," Messenger said. "I think that - as compared to many events where there's a nice party and a lot of honorees, but people don't think it really affects them - everybody who was here tonight knows that they have a larger responsibility than they thought about before."

In addition to Clinton, who delivered the keynote address, NBC anchor Ann Curry was honored for her advocacy of ending the current genocide in Darfur. Since 2003, Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed militias have killed 450,000 and displaced more than 2 million in their counter-insurgency ethnic cleansing campaign in which they routinely burn villages, murder rebels, and rape women who wander from their refugee camp sites looking for firewood and other essentials.

Curry told the audience she was about 10 or 11 years old when she first learned about the Holocaust.

"What really transformed me was not only the survival - which in itself just awed me - and the courage, but also this idea that people were willing to risk for each other, risk their lives for each other," Curry said.

Curry spoke about her experiences in Darfur, and the stories of suffering that were screaming to be told. Her presence at the June 13 event concerning her work in Darfur, she said, was an indication of her coming "full circle" from her Holocaust education.

She implored the audience, the honored guests, and the AJWS staff to continue their work, especially in raising awareness.

"Because [the genocide in Darfur] is unacceptable, and our action is a measure of our humanity and is the hope of the future of our world," Curry said. "In this time, when we feel so overwhelmed by the suffering we see around us, all we can do is what we can do, and that is what we should do."

Another featured speaker of the night was Glennis "Mama G" Mabuza, a community outreach director at HIV South Africa (HIVSA), an AJWS grantee.

While Mabuza deals with poverty and disease, she said she was filled with gratitude at the event, for her mother, who helped her become the teacher she is, as well as for the HIV program at her hospital.

"I get to work each day with women and children, help them understand their disease... help them learn to live with their disease, and to shed the stigma and the shame they feel, and instead to stand tall and proud," Mabuza said.

Mabuza added to the atmosphere of inspiration by singing a heartfelt South African song, bringing the audience to its feet.

"I am grateful for the American Jewish World Service, for their support," Mabuza said. "Without AJWS we would not have the social workers at our clinic who help mend the psychological wounds (inflicted by the disease)."

Many of the attendees were looking forward to, as Manhattan's Jeffrey Moskin put it, seeing "Bill Clinton in action."

Moskin said the Jewish community has come into its own in the last 20 years, making strides in its social action and charitable campaigns, which include Jewish and non-Jewish causes alike.

Moskin, who supports the AJWS and noted the organization's impressive expansion of accomplishment and influence, said that the crowd that had gathered at Lincoln Center represented a large group of selfless donors, who had little personal gain at stake in their contribution to the AJWS.

"This is pretty anonymous philanthropy," Moskin said.

Others, such as Diana Erbsen and her mother, Jill Prosky, were drawn to the event by their admiration of, and commitment to, the AJWS.

"I'm very impressed that Ruth Messenger and the AJWS were really the first to say 'hey, we've got to pay attention to what's happening in Darfur'," Prosky said. "We've been supporters for years, but I'm so proud at how they've taken a leadership role."

Rabbi Elyse D. Frishman, spiritual leader of Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, N.J., had reunited with some old friends at the event, and noted her synagogue's commitment to the Darfur cause.

"We're involved in a lot of these causes, but this is most pressing because it's life or death," Frishman said.

David Rosenn, executive director of AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, and Nigel Savage, head of Hazon, an inclusive community and environmental education organization, noted how the AJWS serves not only its constituency, but also the larger Jewish community looking for an outlet for their own social advocacy and fund raising efforts.

"The scale of the turnout tonight not only says a lot about the growth of the AJWS, but is also a testament to the amazing work of Ruth Messenger and the board of the AJWS, because people believe in this work," Savage said. "The American Jewish community is absolutely ready to find ways to celebrate these causes and to make a difference."

Rosenn added that the AJWS allows members of the Jewish community at large to express their values through charitable work and tikkun olam - repairing the world.

James D. Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, echoed that statement, which would become a common theme throughout the evening, in his introduction of Clinton.

"I was aware people of our faith needed an outlet to address the issue of poverty," Wolfensohn said.

The Jewish faith, he said, "stands for values, it stands for those who are less fortunate than we."

He spoke about the William J. Clinton Foundation, Clinton's post-presidency organization that Clinton founded to ease the challenges of global interdependence and fight poverty and inequality worldwide, with four areas of concentration: health security; economic empowerment; leadership development and citizen service; and racial, ethnic, and religious reconciliation.

Clinton began with his praise of the essential work of the AJWS, and an example of the Jewish drive to repair the world that is so prevalent in every corner of the globe.

He mentioned a young woman from Texas named Ellie, who baked and sold challah bread to raise money for Darfur relief and encourage proactive public advocacy on the issue.

Several tens of thousands of dollars have been raised, Clinton said, through the efforts of this young woman, who was now spending the year in Israel working with Sudanese refugees.

"And I thought, 'How cool is this?' You've got a Jewish girl from Texas, living in California, making bread to raise money for African Muslims whose plight has been ignored for too long by Muslim nations living nearby," Clinton said. "But she cared. And now some of them are alive because of one young woman's idea, and that came from the tradition in which she was raised. So I thank you."

Clinton spoke about the rise in the power of private citizens; since he left office in 2000, the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the world has doubled.

After the devastating 2004 earthquake-driven Indian Ocean tsunami, Clinton said, Americans gave $1.2 billion in relief to the affected areas. Thirty percent of American households gave something, and more than half of those contributions were made via the Internet.

Clinton said that in 2004, for the first time, small donors gave more than large donors to both the Republican and Democratic parties. The Internet, Clinton said, has empowered those that had little or no power or influence before.

We will never have perfect government, Clinton said; there will always be financial holes to fill. Those are now, more than ever, being filled by groups like the AJWS.

"So that what you have always done as a matter of faith, as well as understanding, is now sweeping the world," Clinton said. "And not a moment too soon."

Clinton said that when he was president, he funded projects that were focused on mapping the human genome (genetic code). The reason, he said, was that he thought if we could unlock the mystery of the genome, we could cure diseases and make other medical breakthroughs.

But what the research showed was that the human genome was 99.9 percent the same, he said. So, every difference we perceive is part of that one-tenth of one percent. Unfortunately, Clinton said, that one-tenth of one percent is the basis of conflict all over the world.

One wouldn't think the ideological difference between the Sunni and the Shiites would be worth fighting over, he said, yet the two groups apparently think otherwise.

And that devotion to difference and conflict seems to be taking place in the Palestinian territories, he said, referring to the escalating internecine battles between Hamas and Fatah, which have left the West Bank and Gaza divided in rule, and caused the Palestinian Authority to dissolve the unity government between the two groups.

Clinton said he doesn't know a poor Palestinian living outside the territories; in the U.S., he said, all the Palestinians he knows are either millionaires or college professors. Yet the beaches in Gaza lay bare, alternating between their status as war zones and slums.

"Only where [the Palestinians] are obsessed with their differences - with the Israelis and now with each other, narrowing the scope of their conflict - are they disintegrating before their very eyes," Clinton said.

But organizations like the AJWS know better, he said, as do the audience. And with that knowledge, with that understanding of the shared human race, and with the acknowledgement of our differences only as the impetus for celebration, we have a responsibility for action.

"Those of us who are in a position to know better, and have the circumstantial freedom to do better, have a very real obligation to act on what we know," Clinton said. "Because never before in history have people had as much opportunity to have an impact."

Clinton said that he travels each year to South Africa for Nelson Mandela's birthday. There, he said, the people respond to colloquial greetings with a local term meaning "I see you."

It is the giving world's obligation to be able to say the same to those people who are living in developing and poor countries, Clinton said. They have no media presence, and certainly no political or market power.

"That's what you do," he said. "Every time you put money into a small NGO in a poor country, quite apart from the life you are saving, you are saying to those people 'I see you.' And I think how the 21st century turns out depends on whether we see them."

The impressive playbill didn't disappoint, Wolfensohn told The Jewish State after the program.

"I thought it was extremely good, I thought President Clinton was, as usual, very inspiring, and I thought Mama G was the highlight; she was just unbelievable," Wolfensohn said.

Mama G Mabuza spoke with The Jewish State after the program as well. She said the meaning of the greeting that Clinton referenced, sanbonani, is no coincidence.

"Once we can start seeing each other, the differences are a strong point," Mabuza said.

She said her experience coming to New York and speaking to the audience showed her the magnificent power to effect change that the two worlds - the poor South African neighborhoods and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, for example - can have when they work together.

"It showed me that we need to bridge the gap between the people at the grassroots (levels) that can do the work and the people in the 'fast' world who have the means, and who want to help, but don't know how," Mabuza said.

At times, Mabuza said, she begins to grow weary of dealing constantly with poverty and disease, but standing - and singing, with hope and with every ounce of heart and soul she has -- in front of the event's audience reminded her of her mission and her duty, and the love she has for both.

"This has given me the courage," she said. "This has given me the confirmation that I'm just at the right place for my people."