Although the Jewish community makes up only a small portion of America's population (between 2.5% and 3% of the country), when it speaks in near-unanimity on an issue, lawmakers tend to listen. Accordingly, the recent move by leading Jewish organizations -- including some in the Orthodox community -- to actively oppose Republican attempts to curtail abortion rights is quite significant. Forward's Ori Nir and E.J. Kessler report [free subscription required]:

America's two largest synagogue movements and several major national Jewish agencies are joining a campaign to oppose attempts to outlaw abortion, arguing that reproductive rights are a religious freedom.

The campaign was launched this week by the National Council of Jewish Women on the 32nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. It features a letter to members of the U.S. Senate, signed by hundreds of rabbis, saying that the "faith based" decisions they help families make on whether to abort pregnancies "should not be circumscribed by government."

Most signatories on the letter are Reform or Conservative rabbis, NCJW President Marsha Atkind noted. Several Orthodox rabbis also will sign, she said. That would be significant, because most Orthodox rabbis adhere to a doctrine that bans abortion, except when a pregnancy threatens the mother's life or health. Orthodox umbrella groups typically abstain — as they did in this case — when coalitions of Jewish groups take collective positions on abortion. One Orthodox rabbi who said he supports the overall message of the letter but would not sign it, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah in Washington, said that although rabbinic law prohibits abortion "as a baseline," there are "many nuances involved in this," which create the potential for government involvement to jeopardize the ability of a rabbi to counsel congregation members on abortion.

Nir and Kessler also write that Jewish groups are considering opposition to Bill Frist's invocation of the so-called "nuclear option," which would prohibit filibusters on judicial nominations. For all of the talk of a great migration of America's Jewry to the GOP, such a shift has yet to happen (and it's doubtful it ever will).