Senator Obama counts among the writers who have influenced his thinking two giants of Jewish American letters, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.

The Democratic presidential hopeful shared his admiration for the two authors yesterday at a meeting with Philadelphia-area Jewish leaders, addressing the crowd from the bima as his campaign passed out buttons with the candidate’s name spelled in Hebrew letters, according to a pool report released by the campaign.

One rabbi in the room for the talk, Leonard Gordon, from the Germantown Jewish Centre, said in an interview yesterday that Mr. Obama’s peroration on Jewish American writers and thought “was inspiring.” After the Illinois senator made those remarks, any anxieties among those in the room were assuaged, Rabbi Gordon said, adding that the former Chicago community activist lit up at the end of the speech.

Mr. Obama may be fighting an uphill battle in Pennsylvania, where registered Democrats will go to the polls on Tuesday. Senator Clinton, his rival for the Democratic nomination, has the support of both the Democratic governor and the Democratic mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Also, many American Jews have received a series of e-mails spreading false rumors about Mr. Obama, suggesting that he attended a madrassa as a young boy and questioning his support for Israel.

Yesterday, however, he went out of his way to accent his support for the Jewish state. For the first time, he pledged explicitly that if he won the presidency he would appoint an ambassador to the United Nations who would veto any anti-Semitic resolutions against Israel. “Part of the task, I think, of the United States and part of — part of the leadership I think I can provide is, I think I can be a powerful voice on the world stage in saying, ‘Let’s stop with the nonsense with respect to Israel,'” he said.

Responding to a question from a rabbi about why Mr. Obama rarely mentions settlements, the Illinois senator responded: “I think the majority of Israelis recognize that, for peace to move forward, there is going to have to be a shift in settlement policy. I don’t think that in and of itself is controversial. My instinct is, and probably the reason that I don’t focus on it as much in my discussions, is that it is very hard to move that discussion forward if you feel as if there is no partner on the other side to actually enforce and deliver on an agreement.”

Mr. Obama also again stated why he rejects President Carter’s decision to meet this week with the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Khaled Meshaal, in Damascus, Syria. “Hamas is not a state,” Mr. Obama said. “Hamas is a terrorist organization. They obviously have developed great influence within the Palestinian territories, but they do not control the apparatus of power; they are not legitimately recognized as a state.”

Rabbi Neil Cooper of Beth Hillel-Beth El Synagogue came away skeptical. He said he buttonholed the candidate as he was leaving the event and asked him about the connection between Mr. Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the Obama campaign.

“From my perspective, the devil here is going to be in the details,” Rabbi Cooper said. “The questions I have have to do with his very pronouncements on Israel on the one hand, which are positive, and then he seems to attract all kinds of other people who have a different agenda on Israel, like Brzezinski. I said, ‘Why don’t you get rid of Brzezinski?’ He says he listens to Brzezinski on certain things but not when it comes to Israel. I suspect the same thing with” his former pastor, “Reverend Wright. But these people keep cropping up.”