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After nearly a year on the offensive, Carol Ruth Silver has stepped down as the outspoken president of the Jewish Foundation for Learning — the charity that took over the programs of the now-defunct Jewish Educational Center.

Rabbi Maklouf Benchlouch, the leader of San Francisco's Orthodox Congregation Anshey Sfard, said he decided to take her place earlier this month purely for the sake of helping Jewish children.

JFL's main component is the Torah Day School, which was formerly run by the JEC and was previously called the Schneerson Hebrew Day School. During the 1996-97 academic year, the school had about 140 pupils. Right now, it has little money and fewer than 30 students.

Most of the former pupils ended up in public schools, Benchlouch said Wednesday.

"That breaks my heart. We are very sensitive to the children, the kinder," he said. "We have to show our people, the community the truth that this is our generation, this is our future — and talk to their hearts."

The school suffered after Rabbi Bentzion and Mattie Pil, JEC's founders, were accused of financial wrongdoing in June. They have denied the government charges. Soon after, the charity's multimillion-dollar used-car solicitation program was declared bankrupt.

Benchlouch's main concern at the moment is fund-raising for the school.

"Right now, we struggle. Right now, we have no money — very, very little money," he said.

The school has only two paid teachers, as well as a third volunteer teacher. It has no principal. Its recently hired executive director is "practically a volunteer" right now, Benchlouch said. The school's English classes for Russian immigrants also have very few pupils right now, he said.

He wants to reach out to individuals and local Jewish agencies for help.

The one route that JFL will no longer use for fund-raising is the used-car solicitation business, he maintained.

"It's too much headache," Benchlouch said.

Cindi Galfin, executive vice president of the Anaheim-based We Care Donations, which handled the JFL's car donations over the fall and early winter in Los Angeles, confirmed last week that JFL's auto solicitations are "in abeyance."

Silver, an attorney, real estate broker and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, joined the JEC's board last February and then became its president.

She was one of the loudest and most outspoken defenders of the JEC's and then the JFL's charitable works.

Though vague about her reasons for leaving the JFL, she hinted that it was related to the unsuccessful attempt to restart the used-car solicitation program in Los Angeles.

"The days when a day school could raise its entire budget from car donations are over. Every charity in California is now advertising for car donations, following the model that was created for the now-defunct Schneerson Hebrew Day School," Silver said in a press release she sent out last week.

In a short interview on Friday of last week, Silver would only add that she stepped down "because it's time to leave…My term is up and the changing of the guard is always good. It's always good to renew the energy."

In addition to raising large amounts of money, Benchlouch must overcome the public perception of JFL as an alter ego of JEC.

The rabbi asserted that his nonprofit "has nothing to do with the JEC. It has nothing to do with Rabbi Pil or his wife or anything that happened with that mess."

He maintained that Bentzion Pil has no contact with the nonprofit, while acknowledging that Mattie Pil is one of the school's paid teachers. The new executive director, Patrick Feigelson, was also a top manager in the JEC's car donation program.

Mattie Pil is teaching because she has been involved in the school for so long and is close to the children, Benchlouch said. She is not involved in the management, the rabbi said. Feigelson, he added, is a "very bright man…I trust him to help us help those children."

Benchlouch himself isn't worried about possibly tarnishing his own reputation by getting involved with JFL.

"Not at all. This is a new foundation. This new corporation is very, very separate. It has nothing to do with JEC," he said. "And when I do something for God, for our children, for our Jewish nation, I do it with no fear at all."

In addition to Benchlouch, the three-person board includes Svetlana Soukhinina and Rita Volkov.

Benchlouch said he knew nothing about any apparent relationship between JFL and the Children's Educational Center, another group recently tied to Bentzion Pil.

Despite the fact that the CEC had been soliciting cars out of the JFL's downtown San Francisco office, Silver denied any knowledge of the group.

"I have no idea," she said. "I don't know."