ENCINO >> Rabbi Asher Hakakha of Torat Hayim Valley synagogue — an Orthodox congregation of mostly Persian Jews — never bothered to vote in an election.

But the mild-mannered rabbi from Iran feels so passionate about Donald J. Trump, that he intends to cast his first vote for U.S. president in November for the billionaire real estate mogul.

“I think Trump is going to ‘Make America Great Again’ — (with) his ideas about security, the economy,” said Hakakha, who was wearing a red cap with that now iconic message before a Trump Unity Campaign Rally on Sunday, which brought together the Republican presidential nominee’s supporters of various races and religions to the Ventura Boulevard synagogue in Encino.

Hakakha is among a minority of American Jews — who generally tend to lean Democratic — who support Trump for president. A Gallup poll published Aug. 31 found that Jews support Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton more than 2-to-1 over Trump — 52 versus 23 percent. Only Muslims had a higher percentage of support for Clinton at 64 percent, according to the poll.

And among those Jews who do favor Trump, the reasons they cited Sunday appear to be as varied as their backgrounds — touching on everything from Biblical prophesy to the potential erosion of capitalism to the economy.

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In addition to Rabbi Hakakha’s belief that Trump will be a stronger ally of Israel, there is another reason he supports the Republican presidential nominee. Certain Rabbinic scholars such as Rabbi Mendel Kessin, who frequently lectures in Israel and New Jersey, believe Trump’s election could help usher in the coming of the long-awaited Messiah by helping to rehabilitate American Jews.

“To our belief, the Messiah is going to come in less than 13 years,” Hakakha said before the rally started. “The rabbis say that Trump is going to take the presidency, even though all the media is against him and everybody’s against him.”

It’s even said that in Hebrew numerology, Donald Trump’s name is equivalent to that of “Mashiach Ben David” or “The messiah, the descendant of David,” Hakakha said. While Trump is clearly not the Messiah of the Jewish people, “we think Trump will be better for America, better for the world in many aspects,” Hakakha said, noting that Trump’s daughter Ivanka is Jewish as is her husband and children.

While some Orthodox Jews are opposed to having a woman serve as U.S. president, Hakakha and his wife Bruria said they would not be — as long as she was the right candidate for the country.

“First of all, age-wise and health-wise (Clinton) is not that well,” Bruria Hakakha, a mother of seven children who covered her hair with a scarf, said. “When a woman is weak or tired, it’s hard to make the right decisions.”

The candidate also needs to have “the right morals and background,” something she is not convinced Clinton has — partly because of the 2012 Benghazi attack, she said. That incident left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead while Clinton was serving as Secretary of State under President Obama.

But Persian Jew Sami Yasharpour of West Hills, a community organizer for the Trump campaign for the San Fernando Valley, said the main reason he will be voting for Trump is that he has more confidence in the former reality television star’s ability to improve the economy. And he doesn’t mind the Republican candidate’s waffling on issues such as abortion.

“I just care that he’s going to … bring jobs to the country,” Yasharpour, a member of Torat Hayim Valley, said before the rally. “That’s No. 1. Jobs. He’s going to put bread on people’s table.”

David Weiselman, a Jew from Culver City, said he’s voted Democrat during the last three presidential elections but plans to vote for Trump this time around.

“I feel that if we have another extension of the Obama administration, it would destroy not only our country but the world for a lot of different things — defense-wise, the economy, the border,” Weiselman said after the rally.

Weiselman, who works in industrial real estate, said he also fears that Clinton’s election would elicit undue influence of liberal mega donors such as George Soros, whom he says wants to see a strong central government and a larger welfare system at the expense of capitalism and efficiency.

But Richard Schwartz, who works as a cantor at Temple Beth David in Temple City, said in a phone interview that he will be voting for Clinton because she’s championed a number of causes on behalf of the less fortunate — “which to me is a very important Jewish value.”

Trump, on the other hand, has embodied a lack of truth, humility and dignity, which would make him a poor role model for children, he said.

“The baseness with which he interacts with those who disagree with him is very unsettling,” Schwartz said.