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NEW YORK — Shoshana Cardin remembers Sept. 12, 1991, vividly.

She was then chairwoman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which had helped spearhead an "education and advocacy" campaign that day on Capitol Hill for $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel.

The guarantees, to be used to help resettle Soviet Jewish refugees, became a source of tremendous friction between Yitzhak Shamir's government and the Bush administration because of differences over Israeli settlement policy.

And the Conference, whose mandate as the organized Jewish community's most prominent "umbrella body" is to strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance and protect the security of Jews around the world, found itself at dead center of the dispute.

Which is not unusual for the organization, now marking 40 years.

The Sept. 12 campaign was marred by a conflict between President Bush and the roughly 1,000 Jewish activists from across the country who had gathered in Washington to urge swift passage of legislation authorizing the loan guarantees.

In a hastily called, nationally televised news conference, Bush lashed out at the pro-Israel lobbyists, stunning them.

"The words were really very disturbing," Cardin said. "They seemed to suggest we didn't have the right to do what we were doing."

Bush subsequently sent a "letter of clarification," which began, "Dear Shoshana." To her surprise, it was reprinted on the front page of the New York Times, replete with the personal salutation. Ultimately, the campaign was a success.

"The conference, in those years, played a critical role," said Cardin. While its strength varies, depending on the dynamics of U.S.-Israel relationship at a given time, she added, "from the perspective of world governments, it still is a powerful instrument.

"There is a very strong sense in the diplomatic field that the conference is the voice of the organized Jewish community when [it needs] to be convened."

The organization's title is unwieldy and, sometimes, so is its mandate: to extract and then reflect the Jewish community's consensus, from the discordant notes of its 53-member organizations, on a host of mostly international matters of concern to American Jews.

The organization has been attacked and even ridiculed for claiming to represent American Jews when many in the grass roots have never heard of it.

And it is often dismissed as ineffectual because consensus opinion invariably gets watered down on issues in which passions run the highest, most obviously on policies related to the Middle East peace process.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the group's executive vice chairman, is accustomed to being in the center of storms and easily deflects the criticisms.

"It is true most people don't know about the conference," said Hoenlein, but that is because "we're not interested in institutional aggrandizement. We don't do mass mailings and dinners because we're not looking to compete with our member organizations. We want to strengthen them.

"You have to make a choice where you're going to put your priorities: getting things done or getting credit for it," he said, deep into preparations for the Sept. 10 anniversary celebration dinner featuring the Israeli prime minister, the U.S. vice president and a host of other political luminaries.

At the same time, the "consensus factor" does not diminish the conference, he said. "It is what gives us our strength."

Hoenlein, who said the history of the conference reflects the history of the Jewish community's "political maturation," likened Jewish political power to a muscle.

"If you exercise it properly, you strengthen it. If you abuse it, you damage it."