Orthodox Jewish Leaders Anointing Trump a Messianic Leader

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There are two versions of the standard Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel, authored by the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the newly-established state, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog. The original text invokes God's blessing upon the State of Israel, "the first flowering of our redemption," a phrase referring to the messianic era. The second text amended the line to read, "that it should be the first flowering of our redemption."

According to the interpretation of the late Chief Rabbi of the U.K., Immanuel Jakobovits, the first version takes Israel's messianic character for granted: the establishment of the state is divinely ordained and a stepping stone towards the completion of history. The second holds out its messianic character, not as a belief, but as an aspiration.

The original text is nearly universal today, but I thought of this difference as the President of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, delivered his benediction at the inauguration of President Donald Trump – and in the reactions in Israel to Trump's shocking plan for the U.S. takeover of Gaza.

Rabbi Berman, the first leader of an Orthodox institution to ever address a presidential inauguration, should be commended for his intention to offer a message of unity. However, his prayer tapped into Christian Nationalist language that is unusual in American Jewish discourse, and has become very closely tied to the extreme theological claims of Donald Trump and his closest supporters.

In his benediction, Berman prayed, "Stir within us the confidence to rise to this moment for while we trust in God, God's trust is in us, the American people. America is called to greatness, to be a beacon of light and a mover of history."

Claiming that Americans were "chosen" for a particular God-given destiny – to be "a mover of history" – is a step beyond recent U.S. Orthodox rabbinic political rhetoric, even those delivered in right-wing communities and political arenas.

Here are some recent high-profile examples. When Rabbi Meir Soloveichik delivered an invocation at the 2012 Republican National Convention, and Rabbi Aryeh Spiro addressed the 2020 Republican National Convention, they both emphasized how America's founders found the freedoms and liberties for which they advocated in the Bible and their religious faith. Both rabbis prayed that America, by embodying specific religious ideals and values, create a model society for the world to emulate.

Neither of these rabbis, as Rabbi Berman did, claimed that God specifically called on America, that God chose the American people, or that America has a specific God-given mission to fulfill in history.

It is true that ever since John Winthrop addressed his fellow Puritans in 1630, calling the Massachusetts colony they were about to establish a "city upon a hill," America has known Christian Nationalism, in which American civic and political symbols take on religious expression and meaning. But it does not always assert what Rabbi Berman articulated.

In a March, 2024 essay, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat defined several varieties of American Christian Nationalism.

One stream believes that America best lives up to its own values when it hews closer to the (Judeo-)Christian faith tradition from which they flow. For example, the Declaration of Independence, which says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

A second stream of Christian Nationalism, though, believes that America is a "chosen nation" commissioned by God to bring about some form of radical, even messianic transformation in the world. As such, American policy and politics are a means to fulfilling that divine mission.

Rabbis Soloveichik and Spero sounded much closer to Douthat's first definition, while Rabbi Berman's language last month drifted towards the second.

The difference between these approaches is significant. First, they differ over the inherent value of democracy itself. In Douthat's first formulation, the baseline is the creation and maintenance of a democracy that protects the innate (God-given) rights and dignity of each individual. As Senator Raphael Warnock, an evangelical pastor, has stated, "Democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea."

But according to the second approach, democracy is less important than the messianic goal they believe American society is destined to accomplish. Democracy, along with the civil and political rights and institutions that support it, is only a tool that can be – even must be - overridden along the way to that cosmic end.

This second approach is evident in many aspects of anti-democratic politics we see from the ascendant American right-wing, including restrictions on voting, ideologically stacked courts, and the outsized influence of unelected oligarchs and influencers, leading to the imposition of many policies with only minority support.

The second approach also dovetails with another alarming development: The transition from belief in America as a messianic country to belief in Donald Trump as a messianic leader. Trump himself either personally believes, or at least strongly encourages his followers to believe, that he was chosen by God for a particular mission.

Influential American rabbis and religious Israeli politicians seem to agree. In the wake of the president's outlandish remarks about the U.S. "taking over" post-war Gaza, Aryeh Dery, a leading ultra-Orthodox politician and Netanyahu confidant, addressed the president directly: "You serve as a messenger of God in support of the people of Israel," he wrote.

Whatever Rabbi Berman's intentions, choosing to present America as called by God to move history was jarring, coming as it did after the newly sworn-in President of the United States said in his inaugural address, "I was saved by God to make America great again."

President Trump cannot claim a strong mandate for his radical policy agenda based on the numbers: He won by less than 2 percent of the popular vote overall, and by similarly razor-thin margins in the swing states that gave him his victory. Many of his policies are unpopular, and experts consider them reckless and dangerous. But if he is fulfilling a divine mission, it shouldn't matter to him what the people think or want – and he is acting in that way.

Rabbi Jakobovits noted that if one truly believes that the State of Israel is messianic, "Faith can thus govern pragmatic policies, and risks can be disregarded. On the other hand, if the pre-messianic stage of our current experience lies in the realm of hope, rather than certainty…a more "realistic" approach may be indicated."

Not surprisingly, the two formulations Rabbi Jakobovits described represent two streams in Israel's religious nationalist camp. Politically, with the ascension of Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the messianic wing of the movement is currently in the driver's seat.

This is the context in which an Israeli prime minister who depends on religious nationalist coalition partners stood next to an American president who mused about America depopulating and "taking over" Gaza. There is nothing realistic about Trump's proposal; it is a messianic policy – exactly the sort of risky, unpragmatic direction Rabbi Jakobovits warned against.

There are many reasons that Jewish religious nationalism in Israel has steadily become more messianic and politically extreme in recent years and decades. It is not surprising that it finds a parallel, perhaps mutually-reinforcing, expression in the United States as well.

What it portends for us all is an era of emboldened, dangerous risk-taking, both theologically and politically, justified by imagined access to the divine plan, and at the expense of democracy. Hang on for the ride.