Push To Investigate Bush’s Faith-Based Office Puts Jewish Groups in Quandary

[Purveyor]

The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has been a thorn in the side of church-state watchdogs since its creation in 2001, but when a network of civil rights organizations urged Congress to investigate the office last week, a number of liberal Jewish groups declined to join.

Last Friday, the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination — a 70-member umbrella group that includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Organization for Women and AFL-CIO — sent a letter asking for a review of Bush’s faith-based initiative to Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But after leaders of the coalition rejected a request by the American Jewish Congress to add “nuance” to the document in several places, the letter went unsigned by several major Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah and the Union for Reform Judaism.

“We didn’t think it was a bad letter, but there were things we would have written differently, and we just didn’t have time to go through ,” said Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. Of the 13 Jewish groups that are formally members of the coalition, only three — the American Jewish Committee, the National Council of Jewish Women and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs — signed on.

The relative absence of Jewish groups from the CARD letter offers a glimpse of a broader disagreement that is bubbling up among liberals as they stake out a new approach to constitutional issues in a post-Bush era. While many on the left believe that Republican policies have damaged the wall between church and state, some progressive religious groups are also quietly wondering if the backlash might go too far. The area of employment is particularly sensitive for Jewish groups, which do not want Jews and other religious minorities to face unlawful discrimination, but also want to defend Jewish institutions, such as federations, that have for decades accepted government money for social programs while recruiting Jews for certain staff positions.

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http://www.forward.com/articles/11994/