Barack Obama said in a 2004 interview that Judaism was as influential a factor "as any other faith" in defining his beliefs. The transcript of the interview of the president-elect by Cathleen Falsani, a religion writer, was published Thursday in its entirety for the first time by the Web site beliefnet. Falsani interviewed Obama just after he won the Illinois Democratic Party’s nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. She wrote up the interview in a Chicago Sun-Times piece at the time, and it later became part of her book.

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