JTA’s Lisa Hostein has the story on the Clinton campaign’s push for Jewish votes in Pennsylvania.

The controversy about Obama’s foreign policy advisers continues. The New York Sun reports that Zbigniew Brzezinski, an adviser to Barack Obama, is en route to Damascus at the helm of a delegation from the RAND Corporation.

Brzezinski, who was Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, is considered cool to Israel, and he was cited in a recent American Thinker article as a major reason for concern about Obama’s position on the Middle East.

There’s some confusion over just who is advising Obama on the Middle East. The Sun called Brzezinski one of Obama’s “main advisers,” but also quotes a campaign spokesperson as saying Brzezinski is not a “day-to-day” adviser.

That jibes with what the campaign told us. Only four people advise Obama on Israel/Mideast questions: Tony Lake (more on his background here), Dan Shapiro, Jewish liaison Eric Lynn, and Denis McDonough, the campaign’s overall foreign policy coordinator.

Hillary Clinton took 60 percent of the Jewish vote in the Maryland primary. Here’s the JTA brief about the breakdown:

Hillary Clinton won 60 percent of the Jewish vote in Maryland’s Democratic primary, but Barack Obama won overall.

Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) was the choice of virtually every other religious group polled, and he easily won the state in Tuesday’s vote. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won on the Republican side of the so-called Chesapeake primary., which included contests in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

In Maryland, with the exception of Catholics, where Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) enjoyed a slight advantage, 48 percent to 45 percent, Obama won among Protestants and voters describing themselves as “Other Christian” — the largest single religious voting bloc in the state. Nonreligious voters also favored Obama.

Overall, Obama won 59 percent to Clinton’s 37 percent. With easy victories Tuesday in Virginia and the District of Columbia, Obama for the first time has taken a lead in the delegates count.

In advance of the primary, both campaigns aggressively courted Maryland Jews. An e-mail supporting Obama and signed by several state officials, including the attorney general, was dispatched to the Jewish community.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), a popular figure in the Jewish community, met with area rabbis last week to urge them to support Clinton.

Exit polling data was reported by MSNBC. No data was available for Virginia or the District of Columbia.

The AP is reporting that the Democrats are floating the idea of caucuses in Florida and Michigan as a way to resolve the standoff over whether their delegates will count in the nominating contest. State party reps say the proposal is nothing new, and they’re sticking with the results of their votes. Clinton won Florida (50-33) and Michigan (55-40).

“We’ve said all along that we’re going forward with our delegate selection program using the vote on Jan. 29,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski. “We’ve got more delegate applications than ever.”

That sounds reasonable, until you consider that neither candidate campaigned in Michigan or Florida, and in Michigan, Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot.

With the Democratic race as tight as can be, this could turn into the story of this election, with all its echoes of the 2000 Florida debacle. Stay tuned.

JTA’s Jacob Berkman has been covering the Democratic congressional primary fight in Illinois between Dan Seals and Jay Footlik, who served as Bill Clinton’s and John Kerry’s Jewish liaison.

The final tally isn’t pretty: Seals 81% (72,704), Footlik 19% (16,563).

The Berkinator will have more later today.

Probably not. But still, this story out of Los Angeles is a little troubling.

Bernie Cade, the electoral inspector at the Westside Jewish Community Center, said the equipment hadn’t arrived, hours after polls opened.

Cade said he had not received voting machines or the ink that goes in them for any of the seven booths in the polling station. Dozens of people were sent to other polling places nearby, but Cade said a voting troubleshooter was on hand and the polling place was accepting hand-marked ballots.

Still, Cade said the process was slow, and that he was worried about more delays.

According to this report on the website Yeshiva World News, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada issued a statement prohibiting followers from voting for candidates whose positions are “antithetical to our Torah based morality.”

Candidates who support abortion on demand, the “toeiva” agenda, liberal attitudes towards pornography of any sort — are antithetical to our way of life and it is forbidden to support or vote for them.

“Toeiva” is the Biblical word for abomination and is understood to refer to homosexuality.

UPDATE: In case you’re wondering what the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada is, this is the group whose representative, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, performed a prayer for rain in Atlanta last year. “He’s the Orthodox community’s Reverend Al Sharpton,” said a source familiar with the Orthodox world. “No, actually, he aspires to become the Orthodox community’s Reverend Al Sharpton.”

If your taste in clothing runs to skinny jeans and colorful fitted t-shirts, you might want to consider voting for Obama or McCain. Hipster outfitter American Apparel is endorsing the pair with a set of sleek photos on its website. Even if you’re a Clinton supporter, you might want to check it out to see a shot of Bill and Hillary back when they weren’t inahling.

Of course, if you object to men masturbating in front of female interviewers, you might want to consider voting for someone else.

In his controversial op-ed in the Jerusalem Post last month, former Israeli Ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon had this to say about Barack Obama:

As far as Israel is concerned, Obama has yet to suggest specific measures he would enact regarding the Jewish State’s Qualitative Military Edge that allows us to defend ourselves against our current and future enemies.

In fact, as the Obama campaign points out, Obama has been specific — more than once. Here’s what he told AIPAC in March 2007:

At the same time, we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing to work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs. This would help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza.

Obama’s position paper (PDF) on Israel, released over the summer, reiterates the point.

Ayalon concedes that he hadn’t read the AIPAC speech when he wrote the op-ed, but no matter. His point still holds, he says, because Obama has said he would negotiate with Iran, but hasn’t said what exactly he would negotiate about. Without that knowledge, it’s impossible to know how we would preserve Israel’s military edge.

“The QME is not just by counting bullets,” Ayalon said. “It’s also about a strategic approach to the Mideast.”

See full JTA story on this here.

The Forward newspaper took a lot of heat for an editorial last week slamming insinuations in the Jewish community that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim agent (see JTA’s coverage of the issue here and here). Critics said the editorial, rather than debunk the claims, lent credence to them. Here’s the quote that got people riled up.

Accusations of antisemitism take on a life of their own. Once the A-word is in play, the defenses go up, and they don’t come down until it’s proved that there’s no danger. Moderate and liberal Jews who don’t share the conservatives’ agenda will give the benefit of doubt to the accusers. Thus the Jewish hawks have the final say, and the burden is on the candidate to avoid falling afoul of them.

Is Barack Obama a Muslim? Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost certainly yes.

“Where does that ‘almost’ come from, in regard to a person who for decades has fervently prayed in a Christian church?” wrote Rabbi Arthur Waskow, the liberal Jewish Renewal rabbi and founder of the Shalom Center, in a letter to the Forward.

The Forward also printed an op-ed from Illinois Senator Dick Durban which accuses the paper of giving credence, “however partial,” to the rumors.

A blogger at the website Jewlicious also took the Forward to task, but for different reasons.

A clarification posted on the Forward website this week aimed to clear up the misunderstanding, but it didn’t address the core question: Why are claims that Obama is a Muslim almost certainly untrue.

So I asked Forward editor J.J. Goldberg. Reached last night, Goldberg said the claims against Obama are that he is secretly a Muslim and that as president he would sympathize with America’s enemies. The answer to that question, Goldberg said, resides solely in Obama’s head and there’s no way to know for sure what he truly believes.

“I can’t read his mind,” Goldberg said. “It’s fundamentally an unknowable. That’s as much as I can say.”

According to Goldberg, the point of the editorial was not to debunk the rumors, but to lay into liberals — and Obama staffers — for failing to counter the implicit suggestion that being a Muslim is something to be ashamed of.

“The whole thing strikes me as very distasteful,” Goldberg said. “If my editorial seemed a little unsympathetic to Obama in this campaign, it’s because of that.”

So says Stanley Fish, the post-modern literary theorist (Fish reportedly prefers “anti-foundationalist”) and Florida International University law professor, on his New York Times blog.

Perhaps mindful of the wrath of the anti-Semitism police, Fish is quick to point out they are profoundly different “in their significance or in the damage they do.” But the similarities are too close to ignore:

It’s just that they both feed on air and flourish independently of anything external to their obsessions. Anti-Semitism doesn’t need Jews and anti-Hillaryism doesn’t need Hillary, except as a figment of its collective imagination. However this campaign turns out, Hillary-hating, like rock ‘n’ roll, is here to stay.

This campaign is getting so loopy I’m starting to need a scorecard to keep track. Ann “Lets Perfect the Jews” Coulter says not only would she vote for Hillary if John McCain gets the GOP nod, but she’ll campaign for her too!

Michael Lerner’s embrace of Obama might hurt him with the pro-Israel crowd, but Coulter’s Clinton bear hug could be a knockout punch. Better yet, lets get Lerner and Coulter to duke it out among themselves in a Super Tuesday grudge match.

There’s a new short video out this week from everyone’s favorite political ingenue, Obama Girl. We didn’t love it quite as much as her breakthrough video, and not nearly as much as Perfected, the mock-ode to Ann Counter by Obama Girl vocalist and MOT Leah Kauffman.

Still, the prize for this week’s best political video goes to Hugh Atkin from Sydney, whose Tom Cruise/Hillary Clinton mash-up had the whole office laughing even on the third viewing. Good on ya, Hugh.

John McCain might be too embarrassed to tout his endorsement from the New York Times. But not Hillary. Check out this new ad, apparently running only in New York.

Think Obama will do the same with his NY Post endorsement?

3

The latest national polls, released by Gallup yesterday, show John McCain solidifying his lead over Mitt Romney, 32% to 21%. On the Democratic side, Obama is gaining on Clinton, who still enjoys a lead pf 42% to Obama’s 36%. The polling was conducted over three nights before John Edwards withdrew from the race yesterday. Big question is where those voters are going to go.