“Political insight, killer in a fight, Yiddishkeit — it’s an inseparable package when it comes to Rahm Emanuel, say those who know President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to be the next White House chief of staff.”

That’s the description given by the JTA Jewish news service of Emanuel, in a Nov. 9 profile of the llinois Congressman.

According to the article, which is entitled “Rahm Emanuel: attack dog, policy wonk, committed Jew,” Emanuel is strongly committed to his Jewish religion.

“He attends Anshe Sholom, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Chicago, and sends his children to Jewish day school,” the article says. “His rabbi, Asher Lopatin, recalls Emanuel approaching him just before Rosh Hashanah this year, telling him that an effort to put together a bailout package for the hard-hit stock market before the holiday had failed and asking whether it was permissible to take conference calls on the holiday in order to salvage the bill.”

The rabbi asked Emanuel how serious the financial crisis was, and Emanuel replied that without passage of the bailout bill “there could be a meltdown of the financial system.”

Lopatin reflected on the consequences such a meltdown would have on children and the poor, and told Emanuel to go ahead and work.

“I felt it was a case of ‘pikuach nefesh,’ the commandment that places the saving of life above all other commandments,” the rabbi told JTA.

But the JTA article notes that along with his commitment to his Jewish faith, Emanuel is renowned for his liberal perspectives and his no-holds-barred political partisanship. He shares all three traits with his older brother Ari.

“His brother, Hollywood super agent and liberal activist Ari Emanuel, also has been unapologetic about his support for Jewish causes,” the article says. “He sparked headlines when he called on people in the movie industry to blackball Mel Gibson over ‘The Passion of the Christ.’”

And it’s not likely Rahm Emanuel will soften this approach now that he’s back working in the White House where he served previously as an advisor to Bill Clinton, the JTA article suggests:

“Since his days as a fund-raiser and then a ‘political adviser’ — read: enforcer — for President Clinton, Emanuel has earned notoriety as a no-holds-barred politico. Accept the good with the bad because it’s of a piece, said Steve Rabinowitz, who worked with Emanuel in the Clinton White House.

“He can be a ‘mamzer,’ but he’s our ‘mamzer,” said Rabinowitz, using the Yiddish term for ‘bastard,’ speaking both as a Democrat and a Jew. “Sometimes that’s what you need.”

— Tom McFeely