Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Newark office, said the rabbis arrested — including the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, Saul Kassin — were part a vast money-laundering conspiracy with tentacles in Israel and Switzerland. Another person, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, of Brooklyn, was accused of being a kidney salesman who enticed vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then sold the body parts for $160,000.

Mr. Dun stressed that the case was neither motivated by religion nor by politics — an important point given that the New Jersey governor's race pits the former United States Attorney, Christopher J. Christie, under whom the investigation began, against a Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jon S. Corzine, whose administration was not spared in Thursday's arrests.

In separate money laundering complaints, several rabbis from Brooklyn and New Jersey were charged with offenses ranging from the trafficking of kidneys from Israeli donors to laundering proceeds from selling fake Gucci and Prada bags.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the investigation initially focused, with the help of the cooperating witness, on the money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, Deal, N.J. and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.

In Deal, Mike Winnick of the Elberon section of Long Branch was praying inside the Deal Synagogue when it was raided by FBI, IRS and Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office agents.

"Everyone was looking at each other, like, 'What's going on here?' " he said.

Winnick said four FBI agents escorted a rabbi from the synagogue into his office and blocked the doorway.

Winnick said he left shortly afterward.Nearby, FBI and IRS agents removed several boxes from the Deal Yeshiva, a school that educates the children of Sephardic Jews.