Hillary Rodham Clinton might have the endorsement of two of the top Jewish names in Pennsylvania politics — Governor Ed Rendell and Rep. Allyson Schwartz of Philadelphia — but 70 other leading Jewish professionals from the Keystone State would rather see Barack Obama at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Josh Shapiro, the deputy speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, drafted an open letter to the state’s Jewish community on behalf of Mr. Obama, the candidate who boasts what Mr. Shapiro calls a “100 percent voting record on Israel issues.”

In an interview, Mr. Shapiro said it’s time to, “as Jews, stand up and say how much we admire Senator Obama for condemning the words of his pastor and making sure he is Israel’s ally in the Middle East.”

The letter, which can be found online here at the Jewish news service JTA, praises Senator Obama at length for his recent speech on race and argues that he shouldn’t be held accountable for incendiary remarks made by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.



While we are profoundly disturbed by the unpatriotic, bigoted and anti-Semitic comments of the retired pastor of Senator Obama’s church, we are moved that Barack stood up at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia earlier this month, and “condemned in unequivocal terms the statements of Reverend Wright” and expressed his own views on issues near and dear to the heart and soul of the Jewish community. Specifically, in repudiating the remarks of his former pastor, Senator Obama said Reverend Wright “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country…a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

“We respectfully ask that you stand with Senator Barack Obama and vote for him on April 22,” the letter ends.

Henri Barkey, chairman of the international relations program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., is an unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign who affixed his signature to the letter. Senator Obama has been “misrepresented” by his association with Reverend Wright, Mr. Barkey said, and Jewish people should hear the truth about Mr. Obama’s pro-Israel policies from fellow Jewish people.

“This is how American politics can get — very dirty and personal,” Mr. Barkey said. “My sense in this day and age is you don’t let anything fester. You set the record straight, and perhaps that should have been done earlier. When you don’t respond quicker, people assume it’s true.”