the first time i have heard someone in my lifetime called a "lamed-vavnik" - one of the ten righteous people on earth at one time put here by God. quite something for Kissinger to say this.
I consider George W. Bush that one just man who bears all the world's troubles.
He didn't actually say that he was one of the ten, because no one knows that but God. But he did say he "was such a man." And as you say, that's saying a lot.
After the deposition of an elected president by a hysterical and lying press, after the betrayal of our allies in Vietnam as we handed them over to the Communist North Vietnamese and to neighbors like Pol Pot, after a major, world-wide cultural revolution that frightened de Gaulle into hiding from student revolutionaries, after the hyenas had gathered to put Nixon on trial and crucify him for further political gain, Gerald Ford managed to save some of the refugees, stabilize a collapsing world order, turn back the domestic revolutionaries, and still keep the liking of most Americans despite the way the lying press tried to undermine him.
It was a critical moment in the history of American and the civilized world, and Gerald Ford did a splendid job of calming things down and saving what could be saved out of a wretched mess.
Then, of course, in came Jimmy Carter and undid everything Ford accomplished, leaving us such legacies as Ayatollah Khomeini, a terrorist nuclear Iran, and a flawed Israeli "peace process" that has troubled the world ever since.
Is this a Jewish tradition? I have never heard it before but it struck me as a high compliment from Kissinger.