A Jewish community divided over key constitutional questions is watching closely but mostly silently as a hyper-partisan Senate debates President Barack Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to succeed the retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens — and as hints that the nominee’s Jewishness is being used against her surface.

In recent days the debate has included disparaging comments by Republican senators about her “Upper West Side” background, references Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman called “disturbing.”

“To the extent that the Upper West Side is used as a euphemism for ‘Jewish,’ these kinds of comments are inappropriate in the confirmation process,” Foxman told The Jewish Week Tuesday evening.

In a Monday column in the online publication Salon, Editor-in- Chief Joan Walsh accused Republican members of the Judiciary Committee of “trying to make the case she’s outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence by attacking her clerking for (and admiring) legal giant Thurgood Marshall ... while singling her out as a denizen of ‘Manhattan’s Upper West Side’ — you know, the neighborhood know for Zabar’s and bagels and, well, Jews.”

Last week there was a minor flap as some opponents, led by former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork — whose nomination was ultimately rejected by the Senate — attacked Kagan for calling former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak “my judicial hero” when introducing him before a Harvard speech.

The ADL’s Foxman said hitting Kagan for her praise of the Israeli jurist “seems like a reference to [Kagan’s] Jewishness that does not belong in these discussions.”

But many analysts said those objections seemed based mostly on Barak’s reputation as a paragon of judicial activism — something conservatives have railed against for years — and not his status as an Israeli jurist.

In response to a question on the Barak issue by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday, Kagan reaffirmed her admiration for the Israeli jurist, who she said was “central in ensuring that Israel ... would become a very strong rule-of-law nation.”

And, perhaps firing back at those making veiled allusions to her Jewishness, she added this: “As you know, I don’t think it’s a secret I am Jewish. The state of Israel has meant a lot to me and my family. And — and I admire Justice Barak for what he’s done for the state of Israel and ensuring an independent judiciary.”

The low-key flap over references to Kagan’s Jewish background provided a small spark of controversy in a nomination fight that most Jewish groups are watching closely — but not as vocal participants.

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