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washington | One genocide nearly annihilated the Jewish people. Another has made them into leading voices in the struggle against human cruelty.

The ongoing atrocities in Sudan, which have killed an estimated 300,000 black Muslims and left millions more homeless, have galvanized a community that knows the lessons of persecution all too well.

“We know what it means to be victims of those who want to wipe another people off the face of the earth,” Rabbi Robert Levine, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, told roughly 150 rabbis Monday, March 13 at a Darfur rally in New York City. “It was only two generations ago when we looked around and wondered, where was everyone?”

As activists across the country prepare for an April 30 Save Darfur rally in Washington, the call has become even more pronounced, prompting increased Jewish involvement and mobilization. Much of the effort centers around the Save Darfur Coalition, a collection of 150 faith-based advocacy and humanitarian aid organizations, which was initiated in 2004 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service.

The AJWS and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for Jewish community relations councils across the nation, are responsible for anchoring the Jewish response to the Darfur crisis.

They’re coordinating Jewish efforts in the “Million Voices for Darfur” campaign, an operation launched by Save Darfur to collect a million handwritten and electronic postcards calling on President Bush to support a stronger, multinational effort to protect Darfur residents. The letters will be delivered to the White House on April 30, the day of the rally near the U.S. Capitol.

Last month, Darfur topped the national Jewish agenda at an annual JCPA plenum, which sets national priorities for local community relations councils. This coveted spot is usually reserved for things like Israel, poverty or social service issues.

“The plenum made Darfur a national priority for the Jewish community,” said Marlene Gorin, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Dallas and the Dallas Jewish Coalition to Save Darfur.

The road to Jewish involvement has not been without stumbling blocks.

At the JCPA Washington conference, David Rubenstein, the Save Darfur coordinator, hinted at colliding agendas.

“Politically, it has been a real challenge to take other resources away without Americans expressing a commitment to the safety and security of people who are culturally and geographically so distant,” he said.

Les Bronstein, a Reconstructionist rabbi at Bet Am Shalom in White Plains, N.Y., said galvanizing support has posed a struggle at the local level.

“I’m going to plead with my congregation not to be so insular,” he said. “Not to worry so much about raising the building fund and the governance of the organization.”

Slowly but surely, Jewish lobbying efforts are yielding results.

The White House has labeled the killings a genocide, and Bush won plaudits from Jewish Darfur activists last month for requesting $514 million as part of an emergency supplemental funding package. He also called for a substantial increase in the number of international troops in the region and an expansion of NATO’s presence.

Rabbi Steve Gutow, JCPA’s executive director, extolled the administration for “taking the lead” over all other nations on Darfur, even while the United States is bogged down with Iraq and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

“We tend to love to criticize in this country,” he said. “But this is a time for applause, especially in the last couple of weeks.”

Others were less lavish in their praise of the president. AJWS President Ruth Messinger said the Bush administration went from “assiduously not talking about Darfur” to “saying that things needed to be done.”

But while welcoming the president’s efforts as a “first step,” she cautioned that his overtures smack of the “words, not action” approach she says she has seen in the past.