Donald Trump has joined Ronald Reagan as America’s two most anti-Communist Presidents after Herbert Hoover. Mr. Trump is also emerging, arguably, as the most pro-Israel, philosemitic President in U.S. history given his abandonment of the disastrous Iranian nuke “deal”, re-location of the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, and formal recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

Trump’s muscular anti-Communism, conjoined to philosemitism—and his constant vilification by calumny—mirrors what befell another iconic American politician and patriot, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, in the early to mid-1950s. Despite their shared incessant assault by vicious falsehoods, both Trump (here; here), and McCarthy (here) before him, had thoughtful, real-time defenders within conservative ranks.

Two of McCarthy’s most insightful and courageous defenders, were Ralph de Toledano, a brilliant journalist/writer/poet of Sephardic Jewish descent, and the Yiddish fluent Ashkenazi Rabbi, Benjamin Schultz. De Toledano’s complete evisceration of 15 groundless anti-McCarthy smears [alluded to by Westbrook Pegler “Grace And Iphigene Argue Over McCarthy,”The Indianapolis Star, May 18, 1954, p. 14, and available in full here) by then N.Y. Times editorial page editor, John Oakes (Ochs), remains stunning to behold, if sadly neglected.

Rabbi Schultz was an equally staunch and articulate McCarthy defender. Their mutual admiration was best exemplified by an event held just after the conclusion of Pesach in April, 1955. The 7-year preface to that occasion—a dinner held in honor of Rabbi Schultz’s efforts—merits elaboration

Benjamin Schultz’s (d. Saturday, April 22, 1978) nearly five decades of service was punctuated by his stalwart opposition to both Nazi and Communist liberty-crushing totalitarianism, and Jew-hatred. He helped found, and became the executive director of the American Jewish League Against Communism (AJLAC), in 1948, describing the organization during his July 13, 1949 testimony before The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as follows:

The American Jewish League Against Communism represents the majority viewpoint of American Jews on this subject of communism. On our board of directors are such representative men as Brig. Gen. Julius Klein, a past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans; your own colleague, the Hon. Abraham J. Multer; Isaac Don Levine; Eugene Lyons; Alfred Kohlberg; Morrie Ryskind, of Hollywood; Rabbi David S. Savitz; and Rabbi Ascher M. Yager, leading orthodox rabbis of New York.

Rabbi Schultz also made himself uniquely knowledgeable about Communist Jew-hatred, translating Gregor Aronson’s “Soviet Russia and The Jews,” published as a 51-page pamphlet by the American Jewish League Against Communism, in 1949.  Rabbi Schultz’s July 13, 1949 HUAC testimony elucidated totalitarian evil of Communism, “equivalent to Fascism and Nazism,” and antithetical to American freedom, derived from the Judeo-Christian ideal of individual liberty: