Local Jewish mothers back march in D.C.

Rena Lourie of Oakland knows more about guns than a curly-topped, 6-year-old girl should have to know.

"They hurt people...They should have a lock on them," says the kindergartner at Tehiyah Day School in El Cerrito. "Don't play with toy guns."

Lourie might not be one of the staunchest gun-control advocates in the world yet, but she'll be at the center of one of the biggest gun-control rallies America has ever seen.

It's called the Million Mom March. It's taking place on Mother's Day, Sunday, May 14, in Washington, D.C.

Both Rena and her mom, Deborah Louria, will be traveling there next weekend to join thousands of mothers and daughters -- as well as fathers and sons -- in an effort to get more stringent gun laws enacted.

"I want to make people not have guns," said Rena, who uses her father's surname. "Call 911 if you see a gun."

Rena and her mother plan to wear matching T-shirts at the Washington march. The imprints read: "Flowers are good. Guns are bad. Mobilize for common-sense gun control."

About 35 regional marches will take place around the country on the same day, including one at Lake Merritt in Oakland that organizers estimate could draw anywhere from 1,200 to 12,000 people.

"I had always promised myself that when my kids were old enough and when circumstances permitted, that gun control was the one thing I wanted to donate my time and energy to," said Louria, who has worked for 12 years in Jewish communal services in San Francisco.

And as for bringing her daughter along?

"I really want her to know personally what it is to be an activist, to take her responsibility as a citizen very seriously. I don't think she's too young for those lessons."

Louria and her daughter will be among 75 to 100 people from the Bay Area making the trip to Washington. Louria is helping to organize the traveling group.

California's U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer will host a pre-march reception for home state visitors in Washington.

The Oakland march, meanwhile, has been organized by the Bell Campaign, an agency that advocates for tougher gun-control laws and for victims of gun violence.

Headquartered in San Francisco, the grassroots organization was launched in May 1999 with the help of a $4.3 million grant from Jewish philanthropists via the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.

Women and men of myriad faiths and races are expected to join the effort, but "the Jewish community is really at the forefront of this movement," said Louria, who is the director of Jewish programs at the S.F.-based Jewish Vocational Service.

Glancing down the long list of national sponsors for the march, another one of the Bay Area organizers couldn't help but agree.

"There are a lot of Jewish groups on here, I've got to tell you," said Laurie Leiber, who is on the steering committee for the Oakland march.

Among the groups on the list: the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress.

"Of course, Jewish organizations have been working on gun-policy reform for a long time," Leiber said. "So if there are a lot of Jews participating, I'd say that's a good thing. We're commanded to do it. The Torah teaches you to go out and repair the world, and this is something that needs to be repaired."

Other Jews around the Bay Area apparently feel the same way.

As word of the march has spread, social action committees and sisterhoods at congregations have sprung into action to organize groups that will attend the Oakland march.

Among them: Congregation Beth El in Berkeley, Temple Sinai in Oakland, Temple Isaiah in Lafayette and Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills.

All of those congregations are Reform, but involvement is by no means limited to Reform Jews, said Abby Michelson Porth, the interim director of the Jewish Community Relations Council office in Oakland.

In the Bay Area, rabbis of all denominations have been writing "sermons about gun control and gun legislation and asking their congregants to participate in the march," Michelson Porth said.

She has helped orchestrate the involvement of the local Jewish community, and has sent information to "80 congregations and over 100 rabbis" throughout Northern California.

The information got out there in other ways too. At an East Bay women's seder attended by more than 600 last month, for example, Leiber helped pass out fliers with the help of her 17-year-old daughter, Sarah, and her mother, Doris.

In addition to the Oakland march, rallies are slated for Sacramento and Watsonville. Three more will take place in Southern California.

The enthusiasm for the march has spread like wildfire, Leiber said, catching her and other organizers a little off-guard.

"When we started out, we figured there would be 50 to 100 people there -- and that would be fine," said Leiber, the chair of Temple Sinai's sisterhood and a former Bell Campaign employee.

"But it's grown and grown and grown. I'm expecting hundreds of people, but I don't know how many hundreds." As of last week, she said, organizers had permits for a crowd of up to 1,500.

However, Kae McGuire, the director of field services for the Bell Campaign, estimated that "10,000 to 12,000 people" could turn out for the Oakland march.

Fleets of buses from San Jose and Marin have been arranged. Thousands of others are expected to take BART and then walk to the rally at the Lake Merritt bandshell near Children's Fairyland.

RebbeSoul, a Jewish rock band, will also be there, helping kick of the march when the initial rally concludes.

Participants are encouraged to show up at least a half-hour early for the march, which is slated for 1 to 3 p.m. The formal rally will end at 2 p.m., to be followed by two marches, a three-mile journey around the lake or a shorter jaunt around Fairyland.

"This has really touched a nerve in the Jewish community," said Rabbi Michael Berk, the S.F.-based regional director of the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "It really touches the Jewish soul."

But Berk said it's more than just "Jews, by nature, having a very strong sense about confining guns as much as possible."

He asserted that "the concept of moms marching appeals to us. The Jewish mom is such a prominent icon in our culture, and the moms I've been dealing with have been very moved by the whole concept."

That apparently applies to daughters, too.

"I'm going to be in a march to help tell people not to use guns," Rena Lourie said. "It's the right thing to do."