A local rabbi says his dismissal as a chaplain at National Institutes of Health in Bethesda exemplifies religious discrimination at the facility.

Rabbi Reeve Brenner was fired in February as a part-time staff chaplain for NIH and its clinical center and spiritual ministry department for allegedly misusing his position, misrepresenting facts, being absent without leave and using offensive and disrespectful language toward a federal employee. He denies all the charges.

Brenner says the firing was in retaliation for his testimony on behalf of a fired Roman Catholic priest, Rev. Henry Heffernan, who was reinstated this month as a chaplain after the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled against the NIH, thus corroborating an earlier finding by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission.

Brenner, who began as an NIH chaplain in 1999, has filed an appeal with the Merit System Protection Board, alleging discrimination and reprisal, according to his lawyer.

Another terminated employee, Eastern Orthodox lay chaplain Edar Rogler, also maintains that she was fired because she agreed to testify on Heffernan's behalf.

Furthermore, she said that based on her experience with this incident and others, she believes that the NIH administration "will do anything to get the Jews and the Catholics out of NIH." She also alleges that Ray Fitzgerald, the department of spiritual ministry's chief and a Methodist minister, "never referred to the rabbi by name. It was always, 'That Jew, the Jew.'"

Heffernan said he never heard such references because Fitzgerald "knew better than to say anything derogatory to me," the priest said.

Rogler said that when she was on call, but off premises, she would be paid. Fitzgerald, she said, once asked her to take a pager home with her because "he didn't want the Jew to get the money."

In addition, she said, Fitzgerald told her that his office was "going to terminate everyone who cooperated with EEOC."

Fitzgerald could not be reached for comment, but an NIH spokesperson said: "The NIH does not tolerate discrimination of any kind, including religious discrimination. NIH will not comment further, given litigation is ongoing."

The NIH communications office also provided a statement from John Gallin, the clinical center's director.

"NIH considers the well-being of all of its patients as paramount," said the statement. "We do not tolerate discrimination on any grounds including for religious beliefs. We are pursuing all issues related to this situation thoroughly. Because this is a personnel issue and the subject of litigation, we are unable to provide more details."

Brenner cites several examples of religious discrimination at NIH, including Fitzgerald's reportedly overseeing the trashing of prayer books used for a daily minyan. NIH would not comment on that allegation. WJW has filed a request for the campus police report under the Freedom of Information Act.

The rabbi says that NIH's Hatfield clinic, which opened in 2004, has dedicated space for Catholic, Protestant and Muslim services, but not for Jewish services. The NIH communications office would not comment on that matter either.

Since October, Rabbi Jane Berman has been doing pastoral work twice weekly, but said she does not lead a Friday kabbalat Shabbat service, as did Brenner. NIH, she said, distributes electric Shabbat candlesticks, challah and grape juice to patients who want it. She is contracted to NIH through the Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington.

Heffernan said that a few months before Brenner arrived at NIH, Fitzgerald had told him, "I will not have a Jewish rabbi in my department." Fitzgerald then admitted, according to Rogler, that his office had tried to abolish the position, but had been rebuffed by a Jewish patient.

NIH would not comment on this allegation as well.

Last May, Brenner said Fitzgerald told him that he could not distribute to Jewish patients an article that he had written, "Brenner's Biblical and Extra-Biblical Dayenu Exodus Evidence."

In a May 5 memo, Fitzgerald gives several reasons for the denial, including the fact that the article lists Brenner as an NIH chaplain and rabbi of Bet Chesed Congregation in Bethesda, and that "writing by a staff member cannot be linked to an outside activity."

Brenner said he finds the objection contrived, amounting to censorship. The rabbi said that Fitzgerald also had told him the article was "false and against the biblical account," an accusation strongly disputed by Brenner.

In an Oct. 24 eight-page letter to Brenner, Walter Jones, the deputy director for management and diversity and acting chief for the spiritual ministry department, charged Brenner with misusing his position by commingling his NIH activities and outside activities at Bet Chesed; claiming that he had been visiting clinical patients on Sept. 29, when in fact he had not, and was therefore AWOL; and using offensive and disrespectful language toward a federal employee.

The letter charges Brenner with yelling at an employee, telling her that "she is not Jewish, she cannot read Hebrew, she was not raised Jewish, that she is working on Yom Kippur and that she should be ashamed of herself telling people that she is Jewish."

In a Nov. 19 written reply to Maureen Gormley, the NIH clinical center's chief operating officer, Brenner's lawyer, Irving Kator, disputes the charges point by point.

In his rebuttal, Kator calls the charge of misuse of position "spurious," saying that "no reasonable person could possibly believe that in some fashion the Congregation's website gives the appearance of a governmental sanction to the congregation."

On the AWOL-related charges, the D.C. lawyer provides statements from several people who said they did indeed see Brenner at the clinical center on Sept. 29. "The charge is bogus and must be rescinded," he wrote.

As for the charge of using disrespectful language, Brenner denies being rude to the employee. He explained in an interview that the incident occurred when he invited her to come to off-site Yom Kippur services he would be leading the next day. "I wanted to include her for an aliyah so I asked for her Hebrew name," Brenner recalled.

She told him she didn't have a Hebrew name, he said, noting he then asked her if she was brought up Jewish. When she said she hadn't been, he said he asked if she had converted, and she said she had not.

"How do you explain this, calling yourself a Jew?" he recalled asking her. She told him her husband is Jewish, he said.

In his letter, Kator states, "For a rabbi to tell someone who is not Jewish to not hold themself out as a Jew is perfectly appropriate and if he had not commented to that effect, he likely would have been remiss."

Part of the criticism against Brenner involves his affiliation with Bet Chesed Congregation. That congregation was founded in 2001 by some of the Reform rabbi's former congregants at the Bethesda Jewish Center, which he left when the congregation objected to his part-time status.

Brenner viewed the new congregation as one that could serve NIH patients and staff.

The congregation holds monthly Friday night services at the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences, an NIH-affiliated office in Bethesda, said Bet Chesed president Stan Klein, and initially held High Holiday services on the NIH campus. Other holiday services have also been held on the campus, he said.

Both he and Brenner said that NIH officials had not objected to the congregation's formation or Brenner's affiliation with it when it first began. Heffernan also said the NIH administration initially viewed the congregation positively.

"It was seen as a beneficial project," Heffernan adding, saying criticism of the congregation "only occurred at the beginning of 2006," after Brenner had testified on his behalf.

NIH would not comment on the alleged change in attitude regarding Bet Chesed.

All three chaplains interviewed Brenner, Heffernan and Rogler complained that Fitzgerald and Jones were trying to create a generic chaplaincy in which a chaplain of any faith could minister to a patient of any religion.

From a religious point of view, "you don't minister to people of a different faith," Heffernan said.

Following his disagreements with Fitzgerald, Heffernan, who has been a priest for 45 years, was told he had to fulfill a continuing education requirement specifically one that would drastically curtail the time he had available to minister to patients.

When he did not comply with the training requirement, Heffernan said he was fired.

Ruling on his ouster, the EEOC found that Heffernan's firing was motivated largely by "discriminatory and retaliatory animus."

Heffernan returned to NIH last week; Brenner hopes he, too, will be able to resume his work there.

"I want to be reinstated, and I want to see the people who inflicted hurt on so many resigning, from the top," he said.