With a history of political positions critical of civil rights and American assistance to Israel, U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the conservative West Virginia Democrat who died early Monday at the age of 92 after more than 50 years in Congress, was not known as any particular friend of Jewish groups.

But as so often was the case with Byrd’s record-breaking longevity in the Senate, looks could be deceiving. It was Byrd, noted Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who year after year, granted permission as the president pro tempore of the Senate for American Friends of Lubavitch to erect a temporary religious structure known as a sukkah on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol for the fall Jewish festival known as Sukkot.

“This man was a lion in the Senate,” stated Shemtov. “And no matter what you thought of his positions – and you can’t ignore the questionable aspects of his voting record – you had to respect him for his dedication to the United States, his home state of West Virginia, and the legislative chamber he adored as a father to his children.”

RELATED

An author of a multivolume history of the Senate, Byrd was a master of its seemingly arcane procedures and, as a chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, unequalled in steering federal money to his home state. But as a former Ku Klux Klan member who filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he was also dogged by his past racial views.

Still, according to The Washington Post, in 1959, he hired one of the first black Congressional aides. In a recent session of Congress, he earned a 100 percent rating on his voting record from the NAACP.

On Israel, he famously argued against loan guarantees in a 1992 floor speech critical of a non-binding resolution introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. And in 1994, a former official from the American Israel Public Affairs Committees identified Byrd as “perhaps the most anti-Israel member of the Senate.”

But when he was up for re-election in 2006, he was a surprise guest of a dinner at AIPAC’s annual policy conference.

Shemtov, who was also at the dinner, remembered that Byrd, who came in walking on two canes, appeared to take his unexpected appearance to heart.

“I went over to him to tell him how delighted I was to see him there,” said the rabbi. “He gave me a weary smile, but I could see he was welling up with tears. While it may have been late, at least it wasn’t too late.”

When it came to West Virginia, there was no question where his loyalties lied. Thanks to his legislative largess, federal offices dot the coal-mining state’s hardscrabble landscape. Roads and public works projects bear his name.

“Sen. Byrd came from humble beginnings in the southern coalfields, was raised by hard-working West Virginians, and triumphantly rose to the heights of power in America,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), told The Post. “But he never forgot where he came from nor who he represented.”