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NEW YORK — Welfare cuts, campaign finance reform, the balanced budget amendment and federally funded school vouchers dominate the domestic Jewish public policy agenda these days.

But when National Jewish Community Relations Council members from across the country gathered in Washington this week, some of the testiest debate focused on Jewish pluralism and American Jewry's role in Israeli policy.

About 400 delegates attended the convention of NJCRAC, an umbrella body serving 117 local Jewish community relations councils and 13 national agencies.

Long plagued by its unwieldy tag, NJCRAC was expected to change its name to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

The NJCRAC conference drew a host of political figures, including former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres; Israel's ambassador to the United States, Eliahu Ben-Elissar; national security adviser Samuel Berger; and former Republican vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp.

Some expressed disappointment that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not appear Sunday, instead ending his U.S. visit early that day.

During a policy-making session, delegates adopted a resolution supporting the Mideast peace process, but only after heated debate over a reference to Jewish settlements.

The controversial passage called for the Israeli government to "show maximum restraint on this issue," including "ending economic incentives for settling on the West Bank, freezing the growth of the vast majority of existing Jewish settlements there and banning new Jewish settlements."

A day earlier, Ben-Elissar told the group that in light of how "inflammatory" the issue was, Israel would "not create in the near future any new settlements."

Michael Perry of the Jewish Labor Committee, a co-sponsor of the measure with the Reform movement's Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said settlements "will impede the peace process."

But David Luchins of the Orthodox Union said such wording "is not helpful to the peace process."

"When we want to criticize Israel, we need to do it privately," he said.

A quieter, but more intense discussion ensued on religious pluralism in Israel in a session devoted to "Challenges to the American-Jewish Israel Relationship."

The discussion came on the heels of Netanyahu's meetings with U.S. rabbis over the weekend, when he said coalition politics would force him to support legislation reaffirming Orthodox control over conversions in Israel.

NJCRAC officials tried to defuse the issue in deference to the sensitivities of the Orthodox Union, which opposes putting pluralism on the policy agenda.

JCRC professionals said they are increasingly hard-pressed to counter growing protests over the issue which, in some instances, may spread to federation campaigns — and threaten fund-raising.

The forum's featured speakers were Julius Berman, an Orthodox past chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Shoshana Cardin, another past conference chairman and now chair of the United Israel Appeal and head of the U.S. side of an Israeli interministerial committee on diaspora affairs.

Cardin voiced frustration over the lack of legal legitimacy in Israel of non-Orthodox Judaism and said she raises the issue with Israeli officials at every opportunity.

There is a "major chasm of understanding" between U.S. and Israeli Jews, she said, adding that most Israelis "don't care" about Jewish pluralism.

She said the current battle is "an internal one" and cautioned against going to battle for "issues that are not life-threatening."

The only solution is to educate and "sensitize" Israelis at the grass roots to the richness of pluralistic Jewish life, she added.

For his part, Berman said umbrella organizations such as NJCRAC are "unique instrumentalities" that should not take up the pluralism issue because it is a divisive one.

Apologizing in advance for remarks he knew would raise hackles, Berman said it is the "albatross of Reform Judaism" in America that is responsible for the failure of Reform Judaism to take root in Israel.

The 80 percent of Israelis who are secular "are telling you they don't want it," he said, "and maybe they have got good reason."

Berman found support from the Orthodox Union's Luchins, who said he was "pained" by the session. Interdenominational meetings going on behind closed doors in the United States are one thing, he said, but the community "can't have public confrontation."

"If we start having discussions in NJCRAC" over halachah, or Jewish law, "I'm afraid we will not have a NJCRAC to come together at."