Looking at those depressing new poverty statistics released by the Census Bureau last week, it's tempting for liberals to lay all the blame on President Bush. The percentage of Americans living in poverty rose last year, on Bush's watch, by four-tenths of a percent, or about 1.7 million people. It was the second straight year that poverty increased, after five successive years of decreases. That is, poverty went steadily down under the previous Democratic administration and started rising as soon as Bush came on the job.

It's tempting to blame Bush, but it's misleading. The fault is only partly his. He didn't burst the high-tech bubble that was driving much of the last decade's boom, launching the economy into recession. Nor did he create the crisis of terrorism and Islamic rage that has plunged the international community into ever-deepening gloom, dampening investor confidence and souring economies worldwide.

True, Bush's economic policies haven't helped the situation. His massive tax cuts have channeled some cash into consumers' hands — new Commerce Department figures last week showed personal income rising in July and August — but they've mostly been an economic waste, lining the pockets of the wealthy with no hint of trickle-down. They've worsened the skyrocketing federal deficit without stemming the economy's steady hemorrhaging of jobs. On both scores — deficit creation and job loss — Bush's fecklessness has now won him presidential records. But the underlying gloom is not his doing.

What is Bush's fault is the continuing effort by his administration and its congressional allies to make it harder for the poor to get government help, just when help is most needed. Step by step, the administration has methodically tightened the screws on poor people seeking federal assistance during the last year: tightening rules on welfare assistance to needy families, cutting budgets for job training, sloughing off responsibility for Medicaid onto the states and blocking the extension of unemployment benefits. Taken together, this administration's actions add up to a multifront war against the poor.

The worst of it is that it is so unnecessary. Bush ran for office on a claim that he was a "compassionate" conservative. His one-on-one rapport with ordinary working people is legendary. No one who meets him comes away doubting his sincerity. The rabbis who attended this week's White House meeting with the president to welcome the Jewish new year, as reported by Ami Eden on Page 1, describe a chief executive who seems to care and thinks his policies are helping. And, as a president who famously doesn't read newspapers, doesn't meet his critics and gets his news in digests prepared by his aides, he truly may not know any better.

For all those reasons, we salute the boldness of Rabbi Amy Schwartzman, the Virginia cleric who spoke up on Monday and told Bush face to face that his policies are hurting people. If more people of faith spoke up, the president might start to listen.

A study group appointed by the State Department last spring to explore America's image in the Arab and Muslim world came back this week with a sobering if unsurprising conclusion: America is none too popular in those precincts, and our unpopularity is dangerous to our health.

"Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," the study group, chaired by former assistant secretary of state Edward Djerejian, said in its report. To counter it, the panel recommends massive increases in spending on what it calls "public diplomacy" — outreach to the Arab and Muslim publics to explain America's case. Right now, America spends just pennies to make its case to an Arab and Muslim public of some 1.5 billion people that is bombarded daily with intensely hostile print and television imagery and rarely hears the other side. If we want to be heard, we need to speak up. It's not rocket science.

The panel came under criticism from the right even before it started its work, as our Ori Nir reported in July, because of the links of some of its members to the Arab world or, in a few cases, to the cause of Israeli-Arab reconciliation, which to some minds comes to the same thing. The fear of the critics, led by the Zionist Organization of America, was that the panel would come back with criticisms of Israel and calls for the administration to tailor its policies toward the Palestinian cause.

It turns out the fear was misplaced. The panel states outright in its report that the "Arab-Israeli conflict remains a visible and significant point of contention between the United States and many Arab and Muslim countries," and says that "peace in that region, as well as the transformation of Iraq, would reduce tensions." But those issues were outside the panel's mandate, the report says. It limits its discussion to the things that can be done right now, given the inherent conflicts of values and interests as they now exist, to reduce tensions and explain our cause better. America can make itself heard, the panel says, but it needs to make the effort.

For all that, there is an ideological subtext to the panel's report. It's based on the premise, inherent in the much-maligned work of diplomats, that dialogue and communication can help reduce tensions between people, nations and cultures. That is a simple truth in human relations that's all but disappeared from America's diplomatic vocabulary these days.

It's not clear how it happened, but somehow Yom Kippur seems to have been canceled this year. The public is duly warned.

That's right: Jews are not permitted this year to find fault in themselves or to repent of any wrongdoing. We have done nothing wrong. It's official. All our troubles are somebody else's fault.

True, the liturgy of the holy day of atonement has yet to catch up with this new reality. The Yom Kippur service still takes the outmoded view that we have acted wrongly as a community and ought to repent and atone as a community. It says that we — collectively — have sinned, acted treacherously, stolen, spoken slander, acted perversely, wrought wickedness and a whole lot more.

Obviously, however, all this may be dismissed as antisemitic libel. We are sorry for nothing.

For the sin we have sinned willingly or because we had no choice.

For the sin we have sinned by hardening our hearts.

For the sin we have sinned without knowing it.

For the sin we have sinned by loose speech.

For the sin we have sinned by sexual abuse.

For the sin we have sinned openly or in secret.

For the sin we have sinned by intentional deceit.

For the sin we have sinned by insult or incitement.

For the sin we have sinned by defrauding our neighbors.

For the sin we have sinned by conniving.

For the sin we have sinned by exploitation.

For the sin we have sinned by contempt for the wise.

For the sin we have sinned by violence.

To all these we reply: lies. The whole world is against us. It's not our fault. Besides, they deserved it.

We at the Forward wish all our readers a meaningful holiday, an easy fast and a clear eye to look within. And to all those we have offended or wronged: We ask your forgiveness.