To the sound of plaintive wails from ceremonial ram’s horns, some 100 marchers paraded along the pathways of the Morristown Green on Nov. 6, decrying the mass murder, rape, and starvation that has taken 400,000 lives in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The crowd, largely Jewish and overwhelmingly white, gathered to call attention to the ethnic cleansing by Khartoum’s largely Arab government that has raged in the African nation’s western area since 2003 and to urge the administration of President George W. Bush to help stop the killing.

They marched in circles through the park, stopping at the end of each rotation to hear six people blow the shofars, the rams’ horns that are usually sounded in synagogue settings.

This time the keening notes were intended to recall the biblical blasts of the trumpets used by Joshua to crumble the walls of Jericho, said one of the rally’s organizers, Rabbi Joel Soffin of Temple Shalom in Succasunna.

“It has been called genocide by our president, but too little has been done to end it,” he said of the tragedy in Darfur.

Organizers of the rally, including Soffin and United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey’s Community Relations Committee, collected 81 signatures on a petition addressed to Bush. His administration officially labeled the killings in Darfur as genocide 14 months ago, “but to date, the U.S. has failed to take sufficient action to stop the violence,” the petition read.

It also noted the thousands of deaths and displacements that have occurred since then. “Other atrocities are taking place on a regular basis…. We call on you to assert U.S. leadership to take the necessary measures to stop the violence, create safety for the innocent men, women and children of Darfur, demand accountability, and support a comprehensive peace in Sudan.”

“One of our roles as Jews is to wake up the world, and the shofar is certainly a good symbol of that,” said Lewis Schwarz, a Randolph resident and CRC member. “You blow the horn and you hope somebody listens and says, ‘Yes, I want to be involved.’”

“It is a clarion call for action,” said CRC associate Carolyn Fefferman, who lamented that too few Americans know or care about the genocides that keep occurring in faraway lands.

Underscoring her point, Morristown Mayor John DeLaney told the crowd, “When I was asked to come here today, I have to admit I was rather embarrassed because I knew nothing about what was involved.”

Then, reading aloud from a fact sheet on Darfur, DeLaney told the audience that in addition to “the violence, starvation, and disease, more than 2.5 million people have been displaced from their homes, and more than 200,000 have fled across the border to Chad.”

Welcoming the demonstrators, another rally organizer, Sue Rosenthal, chair of the Morris County Human Relations Commission and past chair of Holocaust Council of MetroWest, said, “We cannot help but remember another tragic event in world history, Kristallnacht,” the organized trashing of synagogues and Jewish businesses by Nazi thugs in November 1938.

“It, too, was ignored by the world and ultimately led to the genocide of more than 11 million innocent men, women, and children,” she said.

Among those who sounded the horns was Allen Menkin, a pediatrician from Budd Lake.

“We know that this cannot be allowed to happen,” he told NJ Jewish News. “History is turned by individuals. We don’t really think we’re going to make walls come tumbling down, but if somebody doesn’t start it, it will never start. So, we’re starting.”

Brian Ide, a high school sophomore from Flanders, said he had been sounding the shofar since third grade.

“The genocide in Darfur is really horrible,” he said as he walked briskly around the green. “It’s just like another Holocaust and like the first one, no one really notices or cares.”

Jason Berger, an eighth-grader in Randolph who is also developing his skills as a shofar blower, agreed. “I’m walking for Darfur because people are dying for no reason,” he said.

After the horns were sounded for a final time, two men from Darfur stirred the crowd with impassioned speeches about the dire situation in their homeland.

Abdelbagy Abushanab, president of the Darfur Rehabilitation Project, said his group seeks a peaceful end to the mass killing that has afflicted his people.

“As a Darfurian, many times it is very hard to talk about what is going on. It is a genocide, a unique crime against humanity,” said Abushanab. “As we speak, before this event is going to be over, many women will be raped in Darfur, many children will die because of disease, starvation, and the militias that are supported by the government of the Sudan,” he said.

“What can we do as individuals?” he asked. “I think every single person’s action toward addressing the tragedy of genocide counts. We have to push our representatives.”

Daowd Salih, vice chair of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy, said his culture as well as his people are being threatened with extinction.

“Darfur is being targeted by Arabs. We as Africans have been there for a long time. They want to destroy African culture and traditions and replace them with Arabic speakers and Arabize people. We, the African people, refuse the Arabized mentality. We are African-born and have our own African traditions.”

Ending the event with a benediction, the Rev. Philip Dana Wilson of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, told the audience a closing prayer “usually means a call upon God to bless our efforts. But I tell you, we are the hands of God, and the blessing we call for is the work of our hands — to make people around the world feel the suffering personally — to contact our leaders on this matter and call them to their better selves.”