Born in what is now Ukraine, Rabbi Baruch Korff, who died twenty years ago, spent most of his life in America. During World War II, he served as the director of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People, an organization dedicated to rescuing Jews from Nazi-controlled Europe. He also became a confidant of President Nixon, whom he defended to the bitter end. Robert Philpot writes:
Not for nothing had Nixon introduced Korff to Chicago’s mayor as “my rabbi” earlier that spring. For, during the dying months of his presidency, Korff had emerged as Nixon’s most full-throated supporter. The previous autumn he had launched the National Committee for Fairness to the Presidency, which was committed to reaffirming “our faith in God and country, in constitutional government, in the presidency, and in our beloved president.” Its full-page newspaper advertisements were no less effusive, charging that Nixon’s media enemies had “scandalized him, brutalized him, [and] savaged him day after day, night after night.” . . .
[U]nlike many of the Jews who voted to re-elect him in 1972—when Nixon captured the second-highest share of the traditionally Democratic Jewish vote in the previous 60 years—Korff seemed prepared to give the president a pass. After [Korff’s] death, his daughter said her father “felt a kinship to Nixon in no small part because of his aid to Israel.” That sentiment was justified. In October 1973, when Israel faced an existential threat, Nixon was consumed by Watergate. With the Soviets flying arms into Egypt and Syria, Nixon’s aides debated how they could aid their ally without antagonizing the Arab states who had already imposed an oil embargo. Nixon took charge and, with the command “do it now,” ordered the Pentagon to start resupplying Israel’s depleted forces.
Read more on Jewish Chronicle: http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/139874/the-bizarre-truth-about-nixons-rabbi