There’s so much good stuff in Leon Wieseltier’s recent essay on why the Jewish community need not fear Barack Obama that we’re just going to pick out our five and a half favorite quotes:

1. The quote: "Russert then broached the embarrassment of Obama's pastor, and his racialist and anti-Zionist assertions. Suddenly the wild broodings of the Jewish blogosphere were erupting into prime time."
   Why we like it: Sometimes it's reassuring to know other people think the Jewish blogosphere has a "wild brooding" problem.
2. The quote: "As for Obama's notorious middle name: it is the rankest Islamophobia to suggest that all Husseins are the same. I run into Islamophobia in the Jewish community rather often. It is unpretty and it is un-Judaic. Barack Hussein Obama is as splendid a name for a patriotic American as, say, Abner Mikva."
   Why we like it: "Unpretty and un-Judaic" -- well said.
3. The first part of the quote: "It is true that sometimes American Jewish identity appears to consist in a great competition in worry, and whoever worries most, wins; and it is true that American Jewish culture is too consumed by the commemoration, or the anticipation, of disaster."
   Why we like it: "Whoever worries most, wins" is totally the motto of Judaism. I think it's in Latin on the Brandeis University crest.
   The second part of the quote: "Anyway, worry is also an expression of love. The more intensely you cherish something, the more regularly you contemplate the possibility of its disappearance."
   Why we like it: Because it's an empathic explanation of why the topic of Israel makes American Jews (us included) so crazy.
4. The quote: "This Jewish need to believe in the friendship of the highest power in the land is a survival of the political mentality of medieval Jewry, with its preference for "vertical alliances" over any reliance upon the goodwill of the local population--a highly anomalous survival in the American case, in which horizontal alliances, at every level of politics, are a regular feature of Jewish existence."
   Why we like it: Because context is key.
5. The quote: "September 11 drew the United States into a new and deep and justified engagement with the Arab world, and American Jews will have to accustom themselves to this historical complication--but hold the kaddish, because in American presidential politics now there is not an enemy in sight."
   Why we like it: Because it's true.