2008 Recipient Special:
Presentation Remarks by Madam Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella
2008 Presentation Remarks by Madam Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella
Distinguished guests, Bronfpersons. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its conceptual sibling, the Genocide Convention. Along with the miraculous regeneration represented by the creation of the State of Israel, whose 60th Anniversary we also celebrate this year, these were the wings of the Phoenix that rose from the ashes of Auschwitz and roared their outrage. The Holocaust was the defining event of our lifetime. It transfixed a world shamefully chastened, and taught new, horrifying lessons about the power of intolerance, indignity, and injustice. These lessons resulted in the rhetorical splendor of the Universal Declaration and Genocide Convention, and the majestic idealism of the United Nations. We learned 3 morality lessons from the concentration camps of Europe:
- We must never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable.
- It is not just what you stand for, it’s what you stand up for. And,
- Indifference is injustice’s incubator.
These are core Jewish values and these are core humanitarian values. Collectively, these values trumpeted ‘Never Again’. Yet what was never supposed to happen again, has. Again and Again. Nations debate, people die; nations dissemble, people die; nations defy; people die.
Rachel Andres’ grandmother’s entire family was killed at Treblinka. Her husband’s father survived Auschwitz. One was a story of despair, the other of survival and hope. Rachel’s phenomenal contribution has been to transform despair into hope for thousands of surviving victims of Darfur’s genocide. The particular contribution she made was to address the degradation
and dehumanization of the female refugees who were being systematically and ruthlessly subjected to physical and sexual brutality when they left the relative safety of their refugee camps to get the firewood they needed for cooking. Under the auspices of Jewish World Watch . . .
Rachel Andres devised a plan that was both stunning in its simplicity and breathtaking in its success. Building on a strategy developed by Dr. Derk Rijks from KoZon, the Dutch solar cooking organization, Rachel concluded that what the women needed was to be able to do their cooking without having to leave the Camp. The strategy was solar cooking. At a cost of $15 per solar cooker, whose construction required only cardboard and aluminum, these economically viable cooking alternatives protected the women from having to leave the camp, permitted them to do their cooking, contributed to their psychic restoration, and empowered them. All for $15 per cooker. Brilliant.
And so, in May 2006, Rachel launched the Jewish World Watch Solar Cooker project to raise the money she needed to turn this project from aspiration to reality for the 5000 families living in the Iridimi Refugee Camp in Chad, 80% of whose residents were women and children. Enlisting a coalition of women’s organizations ranging from the California Women’s Law Centre to Hadassek to the girl scouts and eventually dozens of churches and synagogues across America, Rachel set about to ensure that every woman at the Iridimi refugee camp had, and had been trained in the use of, solar cookers. A year and a half later, with the help of the UNHCR, TChad Solaire, CARE International, and Solar Cooking International, it was done. By the fall of 2007, Jewish World Watch was already starting to provide the same culinary protection to a nearby refugee camp.
But the impact of the project was not just in the heroic reduction in danger for the refugee women, although that was its key objective, it was also in the educational tributaries it inspired. All over America, young people began organizing fund-raising events to contribute to the Solar Cooker Project. Because each kit, consisting of 2 solar cookers, was only $30.00, what Rachel created was affordable philanthropy. It taught youthful fundraisers not only how spiritually satisfying it was to make a difference, it gave them the satisfaction of knowing that even a small contribution can make an enormous difference. Thousands of Darfuri women, thousands of American young people, brought together in humane solidarity by the tenacious commitment of a woman not only raised on the core Jewish values so heartbreakingly donated to humanity’s moral code by the atrocities of the Holocaust, but prepared to implement them. Because these are also the values that have guided Charles Bronfman all his life, the judges settled on Rachel Andres as the recipient this year of the prize established by Charles Bronfman’s children to honour his name, his compassionate legacy, and the universality of his Jewish and humanitarian values.
