For anyone who follows sports, the name “Tiger” means golf legend Tiger Woods. Music lovers know that “Yo Yo” means cellist Yo Yo Ma. For Jewish communities around the world, and for those with a stake in the never-ending battle to roll back anti-Semitism, “Abe” means Abraham Foxman, whose name has for decades been synonymous with the struggle against the planet’s oldest prejudice.

Foxman, who just turned 81, is being honored in Washington, D.C., this month as part of American Jewish History Month, established by Congress and a presidential proclamation in 2006. A Holocaust survivor, saved as a child by his Polish Catholic nanny, Foxman immigrated to America at 10. After obtaining his law degree, he joined the Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913 to combat discrimination against Jews and all others. He would go on to spend 50 years at the ADL, including 28 as its national director, helping to turn an already important civil rights organization into a household name. Since Foxman retired in 2015, the bully pulpit constructed by him has been ably wielded by Foxman’s successor, Jonathan Greenblatt, who, in a time of Trumpism, has had no more chance to rest than Foxman ever did.

One of the qualities that enabled Abe Foxman to excel at what he did was his sheer energy. ADL delegations traveling abroad with him would wake to find that he had suddenly flown off somewhere, Air Foxman, to meet with the leader of a country not on the itinerary in order to work some 8-ball-in-theside-pocket bit of international diplomacy, likely coordinated with whatever American administration was in power. Another was his capacity to strategize on multiple planes simultaneously, to look at the chessboard and say: If we do this, X will occur. That will trigger Y, which will in turn create the following options, from which we will choose Z.

Abe is by turns a sweettalker and blunt as a hammer, often in the same sentence, sometimes within the same introductory clause. He is used to meeting with corporate heads and heads of nations alike, and one has the distinct impression that he never spoke differently to them than he did to anyone else.

Though famous for his high-profile battles against discrimination against Jews, Foxman used his platform more broadly, pouring resources into ADL’s effort to expose white supremacy, placing the organization early and squarely on the side of LGBT rights and advocating for immigrants. Foxman, like Greenblatt, associates himself firmly with Rabbi Hillel’s exhortation, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” which has earned each of them slings, arrows and angry donors. “There is no vaccine for anti-Semitism, no antidote for it,” says Foxman, “and if we didn’t develop one after we saw Auschwitz (we never will). We will have to continuously find ways to contain it by building a firewall, a consensus that it is immoral, un-Christian, un-Muslim and un-American.”

Both the extreme left and the extreme right and their sympathizers bear the blame, Foxman emphasizes. “Both right and left have been responsible for horrific anti-Semitism,” says Foxman. “Fascism and Communism have both hurt the Jewish people. There is no percentage in comparing them; they both have been deadly for the Jews. The anti-Semitism on the right and the left need to be challenged vigorously.”

Foxman is no more worried about people not liking his straight talk than he ever was. The tributes that have rolled in from members of Congress are themselves a tribute to his authenticity. But they also reflect an appreciation that his life has been that of an authentic American hero.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast. To find out more about Jeff Robbins and read his past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.