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Rabbis offered support at the recent first-time North American Rabbinic Conference on Judaism and Human Rights in New York as a Georgetown University imam unveiled a new group for moderate Muslims.

Imam Yahya Hendi of Frederick, who attended the conference with three other Muslim leaders, heralded the creation of Imams for Human Rights and Dialogue, which he says has already amassed backing from at least 50 other Muslim leaders. The fledgling group, which will formalize its structure over the next six months, aims to address such global concerns as child labor, sex trafficking and religious minority rights in Iraq.

"The rabbis were willing and ready to discuss very sensitive issues. ... Muslims need to do the same," Hendi said in an interview last Friday. "When there are violations of human rights, Muslims need to be open and honest with an authoritative Islamic voice, saying no to violating human rights in the name of Islam."

The Dec. 10-12 conference, sponsored by Rabbis for Human Rights, drew more than 200 rabbis, cantors and rabbinical and cantorial students from across the Jewish spectrum, from Jewish Renewal to Orthodox ‹ including at least a minyan of D.C.-area rabbis.

RHR chair Rabbi Gerry Serotta reports that the Jewish leaders held meetings with both their Muslim and evangelical peers.

"We felt we were a stimulus, if not a midwife, for Imams for Human Rights and Dialogue," said Serotta, who also serves Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase.

From the area, besides Serotta, came: Rabbis Ben Biber of the District's Machar, The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism; Charles Feinberg of Adas Israel Congregation in the District; Bruce Kahn, emeritus of Temple Shalom; Gilah Langner of the District; Tamara Miller of Capital Kehillah in D.C.; David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism; David Shneyer of the Am Kolel Judaic Resource Center; Sid Schwarz of Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values; and Alana Suskin of Rockville. Jewish Renewal rabbinical student Debra Kolodny of Takoma Park, who also serves as her movement's executive director, also attended.

The conference united around calls to halt U.S.-sponsored torture, stop the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region and strive for security and human rights for both Israel and Palestine.

On the gathering's second day, word came that the Jerusalem government had, for the second time, demolished the Dari family home in Issawiyah, eastern Jerusalem, allegedly for zoning violations. An RHR team, including Serotta, had rebuilt the dwelling in November 2005.

"It's discrimination of the most obvious sort ... because the area in which they live has not been zoned since 1967," Serotta said. He noted that conference goers raised $30,000 to rebuild once again.

Schwarz, Panim's president, spoke at a plenary on constructive criticism of Israel, which was closed to the press. In an interview Monday, the author of Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World, who has spearheaded Zionist rallies and missions, recapped the problems he raised with the group.

"To the vast majority of amcha, average Jews, Jews in the pews, the commitment to Israel is so low that to raise criticisms of Israel [gives them] an excuse for their lack of engagement," Schwarz lamented.

He urged concerned rabbis to focus on being effective ‹ rather than simply right ‹ when they fault the Jewish state.

"I would like to see RHR do as much to herald Israel's honoring of human rights as ... criticizing the areas of human rights where Israel falls short," Schwarz said.

To mark Human Rights Day Dec. 10, and preview Chanukah, Langner co-led a ceremony near the United Nations on Dag Hammerskjold Plaza with a three-foot acrylic chanukiah. Each arm represented a part of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on the same day in 1948: freedom and dignity, security, an end to slavery, freedom from terrorism and other elements of the document.

"The ethical imperative to work for justice, especially against torture, is part of our tradition, kevod habriyot, the dignity of all living beings," Langner said in an interview.

Rabbi David Shneyer brought his baritone voice and guitar to several conference sessions, offering a new original song, "B'Tselem Elohim," ("In the Image of God") that set verses from Genesis to music.

Serotta saw the conference as mirroring the state of American Jews, who, according to polls, he said, stand more strongly for social justice than some of the groups that represent them.

"What you may be seeing is the leadership of the Jewish community catching up or reconnecting with where the Jews are," said Serotta.

Putting the New York gathering into a larger frame, RAC director Saperstein cited what he observes as the "growth of social action programming" in the country's Jewish communities on such issues as Darfur, Katrina and debt relief.

"The impact of the conference was getting scores and scores of rabbis ... to root these widespread social justice inclinations among American Jews in the context of Jewish texts, spiritual values and Jewish history, as powerful and effective expressions of Jewish life in America," Saperstein said.

Several local leaders who attended the conference cited the powerful testimony of torture survivor Sister Dianna Ortiz ‹ abducted, gang-raped and cigarette-burned in Guatemala nearly two decades ago ‹ who was forced to abuse other captives.

"Her hands were used to torture somebody else," Langner said. "It afterwards led me to wonder whether, in a sense, the hands of America were being used as unwilling instruments in U.S.-sponsored torture."