ewish organizations that have never been hesitant to issue resolutions on American foreign policy, especially toward the Middle East, have remained silent on going to war against Iraq.

Jewish leaders say that while they are supportive of President Bush because he has been a reliable ally of the Israeli government, they have become increasingly fearful of a backlash if the war goes badly.

But the other, more fundamental, reason for their reticence is that their own members have for months been unable to agree on whether a war with Iraq is a good idea.

The question of where American Jews stand on the war gained urgency this week after Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia, was condemned by members of both parties for saying that influential Jews were driving the United States toward war and was forced to apologize.

While Jewish leaders acknowledge that some Jewish policy makers helped devise the president's strategy on Iraq, and some Jewish lobbyists have backed it, there is strong evidence that American Jews are as divided as the rest of the nation.

"The only consensus we could come to was that there is no consensus," said Hannah Rosenthal, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, describing a gathering two weeks ago in Baltimore of 700 Jewish leaders active with her group, which includes Jews from all four branches — Reconstructionist; Reform; Conservative; and Orthodox.

"The general sense," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, "is of profound ambivalence. There is no wild enthusiasm for military action in the Jewish community, and certainly not in my movement."

At a meeting this week of the union's executive board — which represents synagogues in the Reform movement, American Judaism's largest — members decided not even to attempt to take a position on the war because it was unlikely they could reach agreement in a day, Rabbi Yoffie said.

Several polls have found that Jews are less likely than the public at large to support military action against Iraq. An aggregate of surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center from August 2002 to February 2003 found 52 percent of Jews in favor of military action, 32 percent opposed and 16 percent uncertain; among all Americans, the polling found 62 percent in favor, 28 percent opposed and 10 percent uncertain.

Jewish leaders said in nearly two dozen interviews this week that they found themselves in a bind. They regard Saddam Hussein as an imminent danger and would love to see him removed. Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, a Reform university, said, "American Jews recognize the danger that terrorism poses worldwide, and I expect that American Jews are more familiar than other Americans with the very sorry record that Saddam Hussein has on human rights issues, because we just pay more attention to the Middle East."

But some Jews are increasingly concerned about the lack of widespread international support for a pre-emptive strike, and skeptical that the United States can create a stable post-war government in Iraq.

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the academic and spiritual center of Conservative Judaism, said at a lecture this week, "We live in a world gone mad, a world in which a paper tiger has become America's mortal enemy, a world in which America is about to enter a war in which America stands alone."

Rabbi Schorsch said in an interview that he believed that North Korea was a greater threat than Iraq, that Al Qaeda's fortunes would not fall with Iraq's, and that the United States had "gravely weakened the institutions of internationalism so painstakingly erected after the Second World War."

Most Christian denominations have taken a stand against going to war. But while individual Jews have been prominent in antiwar events and proclamations, Jewish groups have said little that is either explicitly opposed to, or in favor of, a war.

Jewish doves say the fact that Jewish groups have not come out against the war is evidence of the genuine hawkishness among Jews. But Jewish hawks say essentially the opposite: that the resounding silence is testimony to how many doves there are among Jews.

Jewish leaders say that while they meet from time to time with officials in the White House and the State Department on Middle East matters, the administration has never told them to tone down or pump up their public statements on the war.

About 20 Jewish leaders met yesterday with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to discuss Mr. Bush's brief speech in the Rose Garden in which he declared that the "road map" to Middle East peace would get under way soon, once the Palestinians inaugurated a new prime minister who could be a counterweight to Yasir Arafat.

"They don't tell us to be in the forefront; they don't tell us not to be in the forefront," said Steve Rosen, director of foreign policy issues for the American Israel Political Action Committee.

Jewish leaders said that in the past week they had found themselves uncomfortably in the spotlight on the Iraq issue. Last week, a notion voiced often in European and Arab countries became the talk of mainstream American media: that Mr. Bush is being prodded to war by a clique of Jews in the foreign policy establishment.

The idea gained currency when reports surfaced that Mr. Moran, the Virginia congressman, told a local antiwar forum several weeks ago that "if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this." Mr. Moran added that, "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

Jewish leaders responded with outrage. Mr. Moran later apologized, and yesterday he stepped down as one of 24 regional whips in the House. But the dustup unleashed a broad discussion of the role of Jews in American foreign policy, the motives of the president and whether raising such questions is anti-Semitic.

David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, called comments like Mr. Moran's "classic anti-Semitic syndrome, and we don't use the term `anti-Semitism' lightly." Mr. Harris said that Mr. Moran's comments started with "a grain of truth" — that a number of Jews working in the administration's foreign policy team have long advanced the strategy of a pre-emptive war against Mr. Hussein.

The conspiracy thinking, he said, is that those Jewish policy makers have disproportionate power, are more loyal to Israel than the United States, and are manipulating a gullible government.

"If the war doesn't go well," Mr. Harris said, "there will be those who will try to peddle the timeworn theory that we have to look for a scapegoat, and Jews have provided a scapegoat for bigots for centuries."

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said, "Nobody says that because Colin Powell is black and Condoleezza Rice is black that this is an effort of the black community to stimulate the war."