I then found that this new alias on vhost1 (
www.vhost1.org/bar) worked fine but the rule in httpd.conf (
www.vhost1.org/foo) no longer did. The .htaccess rule appears to be clobbering the one in httpd.conf for vhost1. The "/foo" alias still workesfine for the other vhosts. I tried using the "RewriteOptions Inherit" directive in both .htaccess and httpd.conf with the hope of having the rule from one inherit from the other but to no avail.