Are the Trump's Longtime Jewish Philanthropists?

Various sites on the web are reporting that there have been several important donations made in years past by both the late Fred Trump and his son, now President Elect Donald Trump, to the Jewish community.

Being that gentiles regularly donate to Jewish causes - through the influence of their friends and the like - such behavior did not come as a total surprise to me. However, what I did find surprising were the scope of the donations - as they are truly shocking.

Fred Trump donated a plot of land for a Yeshiva?!?

According to a newspaper clipping from some 50 years ago, real estate developer Fredrick Trump donated a plot of land for the erection of the Talmud Torah of the Beach Haven Jewish Center at 723 Ave. Z in Flatbush, NY.

The center is open and active to this day, offering programs for youth and the elderly, as well as an active Orthodox synagogue.

Yep it still there

Fred’s son, the president elect, has been reported by Yediot Ahronot, to have donated heavily to Israeli refuges - that is on both occasions when Israelis were expelled from their homes by their own government and needed assistance to resettle.

The first case was in the 1980s, when Donald Trump majorly invested in helping build new infrastructure for the Israelis removed from the northern Sinai by the Begin government, which for those of you who do not know, returned the peninsula to Egypt as part of the overall peace agreement. 

The second case was in 2005, when Trump gave once again to help resettle the Jews of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, who were exiled by the Ariel Sharon government.

Effie Stenzler, the former chairman of the Jewish National Fund, told Yediot that JNF approached Trump, among other wealthy supporters of Israel, for funds to build an infrastructure in new communities established for the exiled, and the real estate magnate gave generously.

Donald Trump appears on the name of donors in Moshav Dekel

While Trump's current and past positive association with the Jewish community are well known, its kind of hard to not speculate why Trump and his father had an unusual interest in investing in the Jewish people. 

One can not help but wonder if in fact the Trump family has some Jewish roots going way back?

In any event, in an op-ed Published November 20 titled ""Trump is headed to the White House. Did we just elect our first Jewish president?", commentator Wayne Allyn Root goes on to list all the reason why "Donald Trump is as close as you can come to being our first Jewish president". 

While the list is a rather cliched one, with this recent released information perhaps there is a kernal of truth to such a statement after all...