Back in 2004, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis of Encino, California formed Jewish World Watch in response to the genocide in Darfur.

Thousands of miles eastward, the New York Board of Rabbis, led by Rabbi Charles Klein of Merrick Jewish Centre, have staged protests at the United Nations headquarters to encourage a stronger international response to genocide.

Those two efforts underscore the breadth and vigor of the Jewish community’s role in fighting genocide, even as our government has faced criticism for being too passive on the issue.

Such a forceful Jewish stance against genocide is shaped by the religion’s history. After the brutal Holocaust, the Jewish community has made it a priority to rail against anything resembling that atrocity in which 6 million Jews were systemically killed.

“The world was too quiet while the Holocaust was going on,” Rabbi Klein said.

The second motive for activism lies in the religion’s moral code: Tikkun Olam, or “repairing the world.”

Most secular anti-genocide campaigns stress their moral duty to defend human rights. But I think one reason the Jewish community has been so successful in rallying its followers around an anti-genocide effort is that rabbis can equate a moral obligation with a religious purpose.

Maybe not everybody sitting in temple on Rosh Hashanah is touched by the moral aspect, but when the rabbi emphasizes the religious purpose, those people are more likely to feel a sense of responsibility.

Tikkun Olam has even spurred Jews to act in Africa. Jewish World Watch has joined an effort to get solar cookers for women in refugee camps in neighboring Chad, because women are vulnerable to rape if they leave the camps to find firewood, said Naama Haviv, Assistant Director of JWW.

The organization also urges divestiture from Sudan to put economic pressure on the nation, she said.

For all these ambitious moves, though, the road ahead looks grim. Rabbi Klein said he feels the anti-genocide movement’s momentum is slowing, even though genocide is still atop the agenda of Jewish leaders.

That slowdown is simply a result of the difficulty of sustaining enthusiasm for a cause which hardly ever makes headlines. It’s an unfortunate reality of the news industry: the media does a poor job of reporting things that happen every single day.

What we need is a formidable constituency that holds our politicians accountable for their action on genocide—a system of political reward and punishment. That has been the goal of every group combating genocide. Yet the Jewish community, by hammering home to young people the religious justification for standing up to genocide, is in a particularly strong position to build an active constituency.

Indeed, emphasis on human rights affords Jewish leaders a pivotal opportunity to keep in the fold younger Jews who seem to be growing more and more disconnected from the religion.

“We have to make the case to the younger Jewish community that Judaism does have something to say about one of the most important issues in the world,” Rabbi Klein said.

Every young Jewish person needs to hear that. They have a chance to take the lead on a daunting humanitarian issue.