News Editor

Off the radar of major news media, a Jewish family in rural Delaware sues a local school board over alleged preference given to Christian prayer, texts and youth clubs in the schools.

In the aftermath, local hostility forces Marco and Mona Dobrich and their two children to leave the Indian River area for Wilmington.

Enter Jews on First.

This Web site with a First Amendment focus has picked up on local news coverage of the unfolding legal case and championed the Dobrich family.

Battles like this led Bethesdan Jane Hunter to launch www.jewsonfirst.org with Rabbi Haim Beliak, who leads Beth Shalom of Whittier, Calif.

Citing the First Amendment's ban on religious establishment, the Web site sets forth its mission: "We Jews have relied on those few words as the enduring bulwark of our freedom, security and privacy here in the United States. But in recent years, we've witnessed numerous efforts by fundamentalist Christians to erode the First Amendment by imposing their religious values through legislation, executive power, and intimidation."

The founders of the new Web site worry that the Christian right is threatening some long-established American liberties.

"We see a significant chipping away of our freedom from establishment of religion or religious dictates," says Hunter, a labor union researcher, citing faith-based anti-gay legislation, refusals of birth control prescriptions and proselytizing at the Air Force Academy, among several recent examples.

Launched in December, the Web site aims to provide original reporting on First Amendment struggles, with an accent on local cases like that of the Dobrich family. It also offers links to existing news reports and blog coverage of such stories.

Items on the site range from reports on legal battles over Christian prayer in the Indiana legislature to a profile of lesbian activist Diane Gray who took part in a spring Soul Force Equality Ride to Christian and military universities

Hunter, 63, and Beliak, 58, laud the efforts of such groups as the Anti-Defamation League, National Council of Jewish Women and the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism to guard against establishment of religion.

Yet the duo saw no Jewish organization making this First Amendment cause its sole focus.

"We didn't see it as any group's full-time job and so we felt very moved to do something," said Hunter.

The Reform-ordained Beliak, who was born to Holocaust survivors in a German displaced persons camp, worries about what he sees as a drive to impose their views on others by Christocrats ‹ a Revolution-era term revived by Rabbi James Rudin in his recent book, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us.

"Essentially, what they argue is that America is a Christian nation ... and the Bible supersedes the Constitution," said Beliak. "These ideas a few years ago were beyond the pale" but "now are part of the regular conversation of the 'patriot pastors' in Ohio, Texas" and other parts of the country.

Rabbi Scott Sperling, who heads the Union for Reform Judaism's Mid-Atlantic Council, sees overlap between the new Web site and the ADL, but says he browses it regularly and finds its facts reliable.

For his part, David Friedman, ADL's Washington/Maryland/Virginia regional office executive director, welcomes jewsonfirst.org as another resource for activists.

"This is an important issue, and the more people, institutions involved in maintaining these walls between church and state, the better," said Friedman, noting what he called the "robust" amount of information available on the new site.

Beliak describes jewsonfirst.org as a shoestring operation, launched with $2,500 seed money from Californians Wally and Suzy Marks, and operated with donations from users.

"It would be nice to have a research staff, but we do the best we can," said Beliak.