The blame for the Clinton pardons scandal rests with the former president, but the involvement of several prominent Jews has embarrassed the American Jewish community. It's not just who received the pardons, but how they got them—and with whose support.

The case of Marc Rich is the worst. Mr. Rich, perhaps motivated by feelings of guilt, or perhaps planning the very campaign he has now executed, donated vast sums to Jewish charities in the U.S. and Israel. Getting Mr. Rich off the hook then became a cause for too many Jewish leaders, who lent their moral prestige—and that of their organizations—to his cause. The American Jewish community is now chagrined and angry.

Those reactions are understandable, but inadequate. Scapegoating the individuals who signed their names is too easy an out for the Jewish community, especially as some of those individuals are distinguished men who have contributed a great deal to community life. Blaming Mr. Clinton for the atmosphere of corruption is absolutely right, but isn't enough either. The problems go deeper.

The close ties between American Jewish and Israeli Labor Patty leaders and the top levels of the Democratic Party were known, but their extent and their implications were not. It is difficult to imagine this pardons scandal in a Republican administration. Most leaders of Jewish organizations maintain a respectful distance from the Republican Party and would have thought twice about asking a Republican president to pardon a Jewish fugitive. An easy intimacy obviously exists with the Democrats (as evidenced by the access of top fund-raisers), and those within the charmed circle clearly think this relationship right and proper. Such intimacy has its benefits. Now we see its costs.

Jewish leaders and the Jewish community at large have relied too long on these old patterns of influence. Large contributions have bought clout in the Jewish community and in the U.S. political system. If not, Mr. Rich would never have secured those recommendation letters and that pardon.

But tomorrow's America will look very different from the country of Protestants, Catholics and Jews that the sociologist Will Herberg described in 1955—or even of the America of the 2000 elections. Its largest minority will be Hispanic (indeed the Census reported Tuesday that were are as many Hispanics as blacks in the population). It will contain millions of Hindus and Buddhists, and as many Muslims as Jews. How will Jewish interests be protected in the political system reflecting that demographic reality?

Not by institutions whose major outreach is to big donors, and whose political activities are conducted largely within one party. The Jewish community needs to build bridges to communities entirely unfamiliar with its problems and its goals. This will not be achievable so long as leaders think that playing a power game with top Democrats is the proper definition of Jewish political life. There needs, moreover, to be a wide review of what Jewish leaders owe to donors, and how that fits with their underlying obligations to the community at large, When leaders of important institutions in American Jewish life signed on to the Rich pardon campaign, what communal interest was being served? Contributions must be welcomed and energetically sought—but the difference between donors’ interests and those of the recipient institutions must be marked far more clearly.

Needless to say, these problems go be yond the confines of American Jewish life. But the Jewish community cannot afford the errors of the Rich case, nor can it afford a leadership that is in many ways inferior to what it was 100 years ago. At. that time, the community, with all its troubles, was vibrant with growth and immigration. Today it is a smaller and declining piece of American demography, its size steadily reduced by intermarriage and assimilation.

Whatever the Jewish community's fortunes in the financial sense, its political standing is precarious and its influence will be difficult to maintain over the coming decades. The embarrassments connected with the Clinton pardons are a price worth paying if they alert the Jewish community to that fact and to the new political approaches it requires.