SAN FRANCISCO — Robert M., 58, worked for a news organization in the San Francisco Bay area until September, 2008, when he lost his job in layoffs that eliminated 15% of the company’s workforce nationwide.

Robert had eight months of savings. They ran out in six months.

After 14 months of unemployment, in December, 2009 Robert turned to San Francisco’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services for help with rent, utilities and, hardest of all, food.

WASHINGTON — Eight imams bowed in prayer before a sculpture at Dachau vividly representing the Jewish dead of Europe. It’s a picture worth a thousand words of reconciliation and understanding.

Yet even before its appearance in the Jewish media it was muddied by internecine Jewish sniping and rumor-driven misapprehensions.

Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, questioned the propriety of a US government official joining the trip, which was sponsored by the New Jersey-based Center for Interreligious Understanding and the German think tank Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.