Though many liberal groups like Peace Now boycotted this month's rally because of the presence of hard-liners like Netanyahu, about 100,000 people turned out to show their support for Israel -- and a hawkish Israel at that. With headliners like Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharasky and Netanyahu, more moderate voices were pushed to the background, leaving critics like Roth to say that the choice of Israeli speakers at the rally showed how "this could have been perceived as an anti-Bush-peace-initiative gathering."

Jonathan Jacoby, a consultant to many major Jewish organizations who was critical of aspects of the rally, did say rally organizers have not done enough to make amends for how Wolfowitz was treated. "There continues to be a good deal of concern about what that represents and why the organizers have not issued a public apology to Wolfowitz," he said. "It seems to me that that would be the No. 1 priority in terms of maintaining a good relationship with the administration."

New organizations like the Tikkun Community, headed by Berkeley rabbi Michael Lerner and activist academic Cornell West, have sprouted up attempting to give voice to these concerns. Hoenlein dismissed Tikkun as a fringe organization with no notable constituency within the American Jewish community. While Lerner and West's group may be easily marginalized, there are more mainstream groups inside Hoenlein's own organization that have been critical of the way the Sharon government has responded to the terrorist attacks inside Israel.

"I think it's impacted our ability to work in conjunction with other American Jewish groups that may have moved to the right on the political spectrum as the result of the outbreak of the intifada," Roth says. "Within the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, there has been group of 16 to 19 other groups with which we would work on occasion to promote a pro-peace perspective, and clearly not all those groups are there anymore to take a similar approach."

Roth said he was encouraged by AIPAC's executive committee's decision to overwhelmingly reject a policy statement that would have lent unequivocal support to Israeli settlers living in occupied territories. "That was overwhelmingly defeated. So perhaps there is something of a reconsideration of the center-left of our community, of people who really want to see a political solution to this conflict."

The doves, however, have to worry not only about building a formidable coalition but also about defections from their own ranks. Abraham Foxman, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League, for example, has surprised colleagues by what they've perceived has been a swing to the hard right.

Foxman pays little heed to those labels and says the Jewish community has only become more united since Israel's sense of security has eroded.

"There is a realization that this is Israel's second war of independence," says Foxman. "There is increasing anxiety that the world has lined up on one side -- the U.N., the E.U. -- against Israel. The Jewish community feels a lot more vulnerable. Israel feels vulnerable. It took us a while to realize, for many of us, that the days of 1993, of promised peace and tranquility, have not yet arrived."

When asked about the differences between segments of the Jewish community about how best to achieve peace and security for Israel, Foxman said, "There are a lot of things about which the community no longer has the luxury of ideology or philosophy."

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