Saying Prayers for Trump's Health and Success?

Should those of us who voted in three consecutive elections to block Donald Trump from the presidency suddenly feel comfortable saying prayers for his health and success once he’s officially installed as the nation’s leader?

That’s a question that has produced uncertainty and some confusion in the modern Orthodox synagogue I’ve attended for nearly thirty years—disputes that will no doubt find echoes in congregations of every faith as the President-elect approaches his inauguration on January 20.

In a Jewish context, the questions involve a “Prayer for the Government” that dates its origins to ancient times and has been widely used in its current form in worship services around the world for nearly five hundred years. In its American version, the formulation addresses “He who grants salvation to kings and dominion to rulers, Whose kingdom is a kingdom spanning all eternities” and then asks that the Lord “may bless the President, the Vice President and all the constituted officers of this land. The King who reigns over kings, in His mercy may He sustain them and protect them from every trouble, woe and injury; may He rescue them, and put into their heart and into the heart of all their counselors, compassion to do good with us and with all Israel, our brethren…”

In the United States, the format for this plea to the Almighty assumed its current form more than a hundred years ago and remains the only portion of the liturgy in many Orthodox congregations that is recited in English. It is generally followed in most communities by the prayer for the State of Israel, composed in poetic modern Hebrew in 1948, the year of Israeli independence.

The contrast in the references to leaders in the two prayers is striking. For Israel, we pray that the Almighty should “send Your light and Your truth to its leaders, officers and counselors, and correct them with your good counsel.” In other words, for American officials, religious Jews are encouraged to ask for “rescue from every trouble, woe and injury,” while for the leaders of the Jewish state, we plead for enlightenment. For Washington, the traditional prayer calls for “protection” but for Jerusalem we seek “correction,” as necessary.

That distinction played a role in the recent disputes involving members of our synagogue. No one would object to saying a prayer aloud about Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has earned plenty of critics throughout the Jewish world, when that prayer explicitly requests that God sends him His “light and truth” and corrects him “with your good counsel.”

But the idea of blessing and sustaining Trump and J.D. Vance based solely on the powerful positions they will hold goes back to the late Medieval origins of the Prayer for the Government which used to include the names of Kings, Queens and other crowned heads, including even Czar Nicholas I of Russia despite his fervent anti-Semitism.

Thank God, no American President (or Vice President) has ever displayed that sort of open hostility to the Jewish people, though the religious leaders in this country decided in its earliest years of independence that they would seek blessings for unnamed officeholders rather than individuals.

Which brings us back to the case of Trump, and the many character failings he flamboyantly displays and the controversial paths in which he promises to lead the nation. If a new leader for the USA repeatedly defines his top priority as the apprehension and deportation of some 20,000,000 undocumented individuals it stands to reason that many Jewish citizens, given our own worldwide history of expulsion and exile, might feel reluctance to ask for the Lord’s blessing on all of the new president’s endeavors.

For two reasons, however, I would argue that seeking health and success in a general sense for the newly elected president is appropriate and honorable, no matter how passionately one may disapprove of his (or her) agenda.

The first of those reasons involves the workings of the Constitution of the United States and the likelihood that a serious health crisis for a new president would only guarantee that detractors would get more of the leadership they fear, not less of it. To put the matter in up-to-the moment terms, if Trump serves out his new term as president, then we will endure four years of MAGA Man dominance, but no more. The 22^nd Amendment limits Trump to one second term, after which, at age 82, a comfortable retirement beckons. If, Heaven forbid, some health crisis cuts his term short, then welcome the prospect of President J.D. Vance, who would stand a real chance of serving ten years in the White House as opposed to Trump’s limited service of four more years.

The text of the 22^nd Amendment (ratified in 1951, after Franklin Roosevelt’s anomalous election to four terms) states clearly: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. And no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President, shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

In other words, if Vice President Vance ascended to the Presidency sometime after the end of January in 2027, he could serve out the remaining months of Trump’s unexpired term, then run for a full term of his own in 2028 and then, at age 49, easily run again in 2032. The math is easy to follow: rather than four term-limited years of Trump, Americans might need to adjust to the unsettling prospect of ten full years of a youthful and vigorous Vance.

That possibility should encourage even the most fervent Never Trumpers—especially the most fervent Never Trumpers—to pray earnestly and intensely for President Trump’s survival and good health for the single term after he has just secured.

There’s another reason that prayers for his well-being as president should be embraced even by those 73 million Americans who voted against him—an argument illustrated by an angry conflict that broke out at the very beginning of Barack Obama’s first term in 2009. Rush Limbaugh at the time enjoyed the peak of his popularity as the most influential political media figure in the country, yet he earned widespread criticism for delivering an address to a Fox News audience that included the notorious words, “I hope he fails” about the new president.

Limbaugh later clarified his sentiments by citing Obama’s campaign promises to “transform” American society. The radio titan persuasively insisted that his wishes for failure only referred to failing at the attempted transformation, and not to the leadership of the nation in a wider sense. But the damage had been done because the public understood that when a president fails, it means the nation itself must also experience reverses and that its more than 300 million citizens will inevitably suffer from those setbacks.

Saying that you want Obama—or Trump—to strike out as the chief executive but still hope that America will flourish, is like saying you want to see Aaron Judge strike out, again and again, in the World Series, but still yearn for a Yankee sweep. It’s theoretically possible but not bloody likely. The pleasure of seeing the humiliation and exposure of an unworthy leader can’t compensate for the pain and damage that a disastrous presidency inflicts on all the rest of us.

With that in mind, for praying people—and Americans are, to a great extent, still a praying people—it’s still worth asking for blessings on Trump in his capacity as President, no matter how much we may despise the man and worry over his autocratic plans for national transformation. If nothing else, we might embrace the words of the American Jewish prayer and hope for the avoidance of “every trouble, woe and injury,” even as we echo the Prayer for the State of Israel, asking the Lord to “send your light and your truth to leaders, officers and counselors, and correct them with your good counsel.”

Yes, it may be sensible to expect the worst from the next four years. But American optimism and love of country should still encourage us to persist in hoping for the best.