A week after spreading across the Internet like wildfire, the words of conservative gadfly Ann Coulter suggesting that Christians like her "just want Jews to be perfected" continued to trigger outrage and controversy in New Jersey's Jewish community.

In an Oct. 8 appearance on The Big Idea, a CNBC talk show, Coulter explained that Christians "just want Jews to be perfected.... That's what Christianity is." She also replied "yes" when host Donny Deutsch asked, "It would be better if we were all Christian?"

Eight days later, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) called on Republican presidential candidates to "condemn Ann Coulter's divisive rhetoric. The longer the Republican candidates stay silent on these hateful remarks, the more they empower Ann Coulter to spread her intolerance to the GOP faithful."

Lautenberg issued his demand through the National Jewish Democratic Council as the Republican Jewish Coalition hosted a daylong Washington, DC, session with five GOP presidential candidates: Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson. (No report of their remarks was available at press time.)

Nonpartisan Jewish groups also objected to Coulter's remarks.

"I think it's really pathetic that smart people like Coulter just want ratings," said Allyson Gall, executive director of the American Jewish Committee's Metro New Jersey region.

"It is obvious that the stuff coming out of her mouth is becoming as incendiary as possible," Gall added. "This is another in a whole series of things that are offensive, and this one happens to be offensive to Jews. She is just out there to get her name in the papers, and that's really too bad."

Merle Kalishman of Livingston, chair of the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, offered this brief reaction: "To comment on Ann Coulter is to give her more publicity."

To Etzion Neuer, director of the Anti-Defamation League's New Jersey region, Coulter's comment that Jews need to be "perfected" is an "anti-Semitic notion."

Her suggestion that Judaism "is deficient in some way and needs to be perfected was rejected by the Catholic Church and a vast majority of mainstream Protestant denominations," said Neuer. "This issue has been much of the cause of persecution of the Jews, and Ann Coulter is seemingly blind to this history."

But Coulter also has defenders in the Jewish community. One is Debbie Schlussel, who describes herself on her Web site as a "conservative political commentator."

"It's abundantly clear what she was talking about," wrote Schlussel in an Oct. 11 Web posting. "To wit: That we, as Jews, don't accept the full Christian Bible, and therefore, it's the Christian belief that we need to be fully accepting of it."

Schlussel also said that she knows Coulter personally and that the pundit "doesn't have an anti-Semitic bone in her body." She accused fellow Jews of "feigning" shock and outrage "because she's a threat to their real religion: liberalism."

Dennis Prager, a conservative columnist who comments and lectures on Jewish issues, also defended Coulter from the anti-Semitism charge.

"As a practicing Jew, I do not agree with Ann Coulter's theology any more than those attacking her do," he wrote in Townhall.com. "But I am neither offended by her nor frightened by her or her beliefs. She believes that Christianity is better than Judaism."

Unswayed, the National Jewish Democratic Council issued a petition urging networks to stop inviting Coulter as a guest commentator. "As you know, it has long been documented that Ms. Coulter takes liberties with the facts. Furthermore, her comments — be they about Democrats, 9/11 widows, Jews, or others — often border on hate speech," the petition reads. "While Ms. Coulter has her freedom of speech, you have the freedom to exercise better judgment."

But according to an essay posted at the rival Republican Jewish Coalition Web site, muzzling Coulter may hurt Democrats more than Republicans.

Richard Baehr, chief political correspondent for a daily Web newspaper called American Thinker, charged in his essay that Coulter had a history of making comments "that offend some group or individual pretty much every time she has a new book to sell." But, wrote Baehr, "the issue with Coulter is not whether she can sell books, but whether she helps or hurts the side of the political debate she claims to support. In my opinion, Coulter has never been a big help to the effort to build a conservative and Republican majority." He suggested that her most recent comments "may prove particularly damaging" to the Republican cause.