It may not seem like there’s much any of us can do to bring peace to even a relatively small corner of the world, but supporting world peace is as easy and concrete as drinking coffee or playing basketball. Here are four groups that not only work for peace, they also grow coffee, make yummy food, teach kids to play basketball, and bring young people together for a camp experience that includes conflict resolution exercises.

	Mirembe Kawomera A coffee cooperative in Uganda that grows organic, kosher, fair trade coffee. The best part: The co-op is made up of Jewish, Muslim and Christian coffee farmers all working together. In Luganda, Mirembe Kawomera means Delicious Peace.
	Peaceworks is a "not only for profit" company that makes healthy foods products produced by neighbors on opposing sides of political or armed conflicts. Plus, they donate 5% of all profits to groups working to empower the moderates in the Middle East who want a peaceful end to the war through a two-state solution.
	PeacePlayers International Founded on the premise that “children who play together can learn to live together” PPI brings kids together to play basketball, which unites and educates young people in divided communities. Currently operating in Northern Ireland, South Africa, New Orleans, Cyprus, and the Middle East, they foster positive relationships for thousands of children, helping form positive relationships, develop leadership skills, and improve their futures.
	Seeds of Peace Bringing kids together at a summer camp in Maine, and doing follow up programming in their home communities in the Middle East and South Asia, this program includes daily dialogue sessions, regular camp activities like arts, sports, and music, a ropes course, religious services for both Jews and Muslims, and a peer support program. When participants (called ‘Seeds’) go home, they attend more coexistence programs, and a conflict resolution and mediation training program.

With Purim now safely behind us (you're not too hungover to shop, are you?) and Passover a mere four weeks away, it's time to start getting in the seder mood. If we've learned anything from the big stories this week, it's that the lines between races and cultures can be very shifty. Hence, a collection of culturally and musically diverse tunes to serve as the soundtrack to your seder planning—or a good-humored gift for the person hosting you.

	The SoCalled Seder "A mini hip hop symphony filled with old Jewish samples centered around the theme of the Passover Seder."
	This is the Afro-Semitic Experience "A mix of Jewish and African-American music both sacred and secular...The Afro-Semitic Experience is an ensemble dedicated to preserving, promoting and expanding the rich cultural and musical heritage of the Jewish and African diaspora. Multi-cultural soul."
	Reggae Passover "Reggae and West African arrangements of traditional and original music for the exodus holiday of Passover, played by an international ensemble featuring reggae artists, cantors, and some of the finest drummers West Africa has to offer."
	Abayudaya: The Music of the Jews of Uganda "A unique collection of African-Jewish music in which the rhythms and harmonies of Africa blend with Jewish celebration and traditional Hebrew prayer. This compelling repertoire is rooted in local Ugandan music and infused with rich choral singing, Afro-pop, and traditional drumming."

Previously: Letters of Creation Necklace, Readymade Purim Baskets

Why don't all pogroms boast such nice graphics?Here’s what really happened, in a nutshell:

At the 6th annual Zionist conference in 1903, as Jews in the pale of settlement faced increasing violence and anti-semitic victimization (and
the utopian dream of Eretz Yisrael seemed all but unreachable), Theodor Herzl proposed Uganda as a temporary locale for a Jewish State. The Uganda Proposal caused enormous rifts among Zionist leaders and was
eventually rejected (on claims of “unpractibility”) by theBritish in
1905.

But what if, in some alternate history, the Uganda Proposal had made it through the Zionist Congress, garnered British approval, and been put into effect?

What if that roughly 15,500 km of virgin land in land-locked east Africa had become a Jewish state? What if, among thetribal herdsman and pygmies and subsistence farmers, alongside the Arab traders and British explorers, where the savannah meets the jungle, came those waves of Russian and European Jews fleeing persecution in search of a place to call home? What might the Jewish state in Uganda look like today?

Gorillas! ...you get the gist.What, in other words, makes a place holy? Is it specific dirt and longitude and latitude? Biblical shout-outs? Is it a “promise” in an old, old book of questionable/mysterious authorship? Or is it spilled blood, sweat, and tears; lives being lived, children born and elderly dying and professionals wrangling and artists creating and politicians fucking up?

On the one hand, the notion of a State of Israel anywhere but in Palestine is almost too strange to indulge. On the other, do we educated liberals really believe a) in a God who parceled out the earth or b) that this God really parceled out a piece of earth especially for one religious group?

From the Ugandan Tourist Board:

Where else but in this impossibly lush country can one
observe lions prowling the open plains in the morning and track
chimpanzees through the rainforest undergrowth the same afternoon, then
the next day navigate tropical channels teeming with hippo and crocs
before setting off into the misty mountains to stare deep into the eyes
of a mountain gorilla? Certainly, Uganda is the only safari destination
whose range of forest primates is as impressive as its selection of
plains antelope. And this verdant biodiversity is further attested to
by Uganda’s status as by far the smallest of the four African countries
whose bird checklist tops the 1,000 mark!

Entebbe’s modern and efficient international airport, with its
breathtaking equatorial location on the forested shore of island-strewn
Lake Victoria, it is clear that Uganda is no ordinary safari
destination. Dominated by an expansive golf course leading down to the
lakeshore, and a century-old botanical garden alive with the chatter of
acrobatic monkeys and colourful tropical birds, Entebbe itself is the
least obviously urban of all comparably sized African towns. Then, just
40km distant, sprawled across seven hills, there is the capital
Kampala. The bright modern feel of this bustling, cosmopolitan city
reflects the ongoing economic growth and political stability that has
characterized Uganda since 1986, and is complemented by the sloping
spaciousness and runaway greenery of its garden setting.

Sounds pretty darn great, no? Come on, World Zionist Organization, let’s think retroactively outside the box! Your great-great-grandchildren could’ve been teen-touring and teen-whoring on safari, for goodness sake! Learning about wildlife by day and disco-ing away the night on the shores of Lake Victoria! At the goddamn source of the Nile! And would it be over the top to suggest that perhaps Jews in the Ugandan homeland might've even evolved
into better dancers, too?

The source of the Nile: Wo-owThe Haganah certainly would’ve had its hands full with tribal inhabitants -- including the Bantu, the Luo, and the Ateker -- the descendants of whom would surely be susceptible to all manner of religious fanaticism, possibly even resorting to terrorist tactics in frantic attempts to reclaim for themselves some of what they understood
to be “their” land. But hey, build some refugee camps and a big old wall and forget about ‘em. Easy enough! (This, dear reader, is what some 21st century earthlings sometimes call “irony”, so chill.)

Things might have gotten a wee bit sticky with our African brethren here in America, though, given the obsessive identification of the American Jewish lobby. Admittedly. And sure, the Jewish state in Uganda would be surrounded entirely by hostile nations, but hey: what else is new?

Ignoring, for the sake of a little fantasy, the reality that there is in fact a contemporary community of approximately 500 Jews currently living in Uganda.

Just imagine it: a Jewish homeland in the “pearl of Africa”. If we can spin it into satire, it is no dream.

Heartwarming scenes in Kampala, Uganda, today, as emissaries from the notorious Lord's Resistance Army arrived in the city on a rather belated mission of peace. The gruesome civil war has been going on for over two decades since President Museveni took power in a coup in 1986, but it seems the end may finally be in sight. The rebels are in town for the first time since the war began all those years ago to talk peace with government officials, and they certainly talk the talk:

LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayoo admitted that the team had security fears about their visit but insisted that they will forge ahead with their mission.

"The value of what we are doing starting today is much higher than the fear, we want this to be the last conflict in Uganda whereby people will never again take up weapons to resolve their problems"

Stirring stuff indeed. It's a bit late, of course, for the tens of thousands who have died in the years of fighting, but better one sinner repenteth than ninety and nine who have no need, right? Well, maybe. But the LRA's belated decision to talk turkey is, as you might expect, less about peace and reconciliation and more to do with their growing isolation.

Even by the standards of African conflicts, the Ugandan civil war has been particularly pointless and bloody. The government has been guilty of war crimes, but in the Lord's Resistance Army it has found itself up against an almost unbelievably brutal band of rebels who have shown themselves willing to stoop to almost unbelievable levels in their fight for power.

The LRA's activities were laid bare in a chilling Vanity Fair article by Christopher Hitchens last year (one that I urge you to read when you have the chance), and among the most nightmarish aspects of their rebellion, apart from their fondness for cutting off the breasts, lips and noses in the villages they raid, has been their widespread use of children, both as soldiers and sexual slaves. Terrified of being abducted and forced into service as soldiers, the children walk for miles every night to towns and shelters where they can find a measure of safety, thus earning the name "night commuters". Hitch:

Here's what happens to the children who can't run fast enough, or who take the risk of sleeping in their huts in the bush. I am sitting in a rehab center, talking to young James, who is 11 and looks about 9. When he actually was nine and sleeping at home with his four brothers, the L.R.A. stormed his village and took the boys away. They were roped at the waist and menaced with bayonets to persuade them to confess what they could not know-the whereabouts of the Ugandan Army's soldiers.

On the subsequent forced march, James underwent the twin forms of initiation practiced by the L.R.A. He was first savagely flogged with a wire lash and then made to take part in the murder of those children who had become too exhausted to walk any farther. "First we had to watch," he says. "Then we had to join in the beatings until they died." He was spared from having to do this to a member of his family, which is the L.R.A.'s preferred method of what it calls "registration." And he was spared from being made into a concubine or a sex slave, because the L.R.A. doesn't tolerate that kind of thing for boys. It is, after all, "faith-based." Excuse me, but it does have its standards.

The turning point in the LRA's fortunes seems to have been the 2005 peace deal in Sudan, which deprived them of the succor and support of the Islamist government in Khartoum. A strange, if not unholy, alliance, given the LRA's Christian fanaticism and their claims to be inspired by the Ten Commandments - but convenient for the Sudanese; their own troublesome rebels were supported by the Ugandan government prior to the peace deal, so it made sense to provide the LRA with bases to launch their attacks on the Ugandan regime. And so two sets of proxies were employed to sow violence and death in their neighbors' countries. A squalid mess indeed.

There are still sticking points, most notably over the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, a self-professed spirit medium and fearsome thug, who is wanted for crimes including the killing of children and mutilation of civilians. President Museveni has stated that he is happy for rebel leaders to submit themselves to traditional tribal justice such as mato oput, in which the offenders accept responsibility for their actions and make reparations to the families of their victims, before sharing a bitter drink made from the herbs and root of the oput tree. But the ICC are, understandably, not wild about letting mass murderers off with a punishment barely worse than a challenge from Survivor, fearing it may set a worrying precedent.

Whatever happens, cynicism should not blind us to the reality that 21 years of suffering may be coming to an end for the Ugandan people. But cynicism is hard to shake. The leader of the LRA delegation that traveled to Kampala today, Martin Ojul, made a dramatic symbolic gesture for the assembled press in an attempt to affirm his movement's seriousness about the peace talks. Unfortunately, though - well, here's the guy from Reuters:

As a symbol of what he said was the LRA's commitment to peace, he released a live dove into the air, which flapped about before flopping downwards into the lap of a diplomat.

Let's hope the humans can do a bit better.

The Way To Peace Is NOT Thru Graffiti.A better morning really does start with a cup O' Jo, so why not a better world? That's the logic behind the Ugandan interfaith coffee cooperative Mirembe Kawomera ("Delicious Peace") that boasts a collective contingency of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian partners. We'll leave out the part about it being located on a dormant volcano, for now.

Mirembe Kawomera Cooperative was created by JJ Keki, an Abayudaya Jew and the current co-op leader. To create the cooperative, Mr. Keki traveled on foot, knocking on each of his neighbor's doors, asking Jews, Muslims, and Christians to put aside their differences and join him to create an extraordinary partnership. Keki was assisted by Kulanu, a U.S.-based NGO and long-time supporter of the Abayudaya ("Jewish people" in Luganda.

Personally, I think the Jewcy office should opt for the Espresso Roast (it's the proper journalist brew) but stock up a bit on the nutmeg, pecan-flavored Light Roast in case I ever breeze into town. It's for a good cause, I think.

News tip courtesy Jewschool.

Hail Selassie: The Old Testament-Style Emperor of AbyssiniaThere's a phrase from Auden's "Spain 1937" that I don't think I'll ever read the same way again: "Nipped off from Africa." The great poet of twentieth century political disillusionment was symbolizing continental shift ("soldered so crudely to inventive Europe" is what was done to the African fragment) but now we can associate another sort of nipping with the land of gazelles, Serengeti sunsets, and epidemic retroviruses:

A Ugandan paper reports that last year of 2,500 people circumcised at various clinics, half of them were male adults, compared to less than 400 in 2005.

And to think Haile Selassie's Solomonic iconography in Ethiopia used to be the be-all of Africa's love affair with Jewish custom...

The real question is: Will HIV-averse, bell-end dongs become selected for in the future without the need of circumcision? All the moyels in the room feel like humans after dolphins develop posable thumbs. "Oh shit," they say.