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Last week, Maggid Books released “Mitokh Ha-Ohel: The Shabbat Prayers” – the fourth volume of an ongoing series featuring essays from Yeshiva University rabbis and professors. To get a taste of the book, The Jewish Press spoke with Professor Jess Olson about his chapter, “The Prayer for the Welfare of the Government.”

Olson is an associate professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University and the author of “Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity: Architect of Zionism, Yiddishism and Orthodoxy.”




The Jewish Press: For centuries, Jews have recited a prayer for the welfare of government leaders, including Czar Nicholas II, whom you call a notorious anti-Semite. Why would Jews pray for anti-Semites?

Olson: You have to think about this prayer outside the context of tefillah where there are rules and reasons why you do x, y, and z that make sense within halacha. The prayer for the government is different. It reflects Jews being a dependent minority in very complicated social contexts where they have to find ways to accommodate their position in line with what the external world thinks of them.

So the personality of the leader is really a moot question. It’s never said with the idea of, “Oh, this is a particularly good king, so we say the prayer for him, and if it were a bad king we wouldn’t.” The idea is we, as a minority in a kind of precarious situation at all times, have to find political ways to make life a little bit less fraught. It’s a way of putting on a good face to the outside world.

You write that this prayer begins to change in America in the 1840s. How so?

Very early, the prayer took on a standard form that begins with the words “HaNotein teshuah – He who grants salvation to kings and dominion to rulers…may He bless…” But in Tefillot Yisrael, published in the late 1840s in the United States, it is a much more poetic prayer with expansive references to the United States, the government, and ideas of freedom. It takes on this very American quality.

So whereas the traditional version [is based on the notion of] Jews as a minority, seeing themselves outside the larger structure, this new version reflects a vision of Jews seeing themselves as Americans, as being part of the scene.

Black-hat Jews are often thought of as upholders of tradition while Modern Orthodox Jews are thought of as more open to adapting to changing times. Interestingly, though, this prayer for the government is much more likely to be said in Modern Orthodox shuls nowadays than it is in black-hat shuls.

I think that’s a symbol of the triumph of exactly what the new 1840’s prayer was saying. It was saying, “We’ve arrived in America. Here’s a place where we can be who we are and pursue what we want without fear of repercussion.” So the haredi disuse of the prayer – and I’m sorry for generalizing, I know it’s not all haredim – is reflective of this new reality.

[They’re implicitly arguing], “If our reason for saying the prayer was, ‘We’re worried what the goyim are thinking of us,’ and ‘We’re concerned about our safety’ – well, we’re not afraid of those things anymore. We’ve accepted the promise of America that we can practice our religion as we see fit.” So I actually see the disuse of the prayer as a really positive sign.

To be clear, all frum Jews in Europe said this prayer pre-World War II?

Let me be very specific. We’re talking about proper kehillot. Chassidim in the 19th century really destabilized and decentralized the old kehillot, so you could have variation. There are probably chassidim who did not say the prayer since they didn’t view themselves as being in the limelight. But in the real kehillot where you had to be concerned about the government, this prayer was pretty much said universally.

Let’s turn to Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937), the subject of your dissertation and first book. Birnbaum coined the term “Zionism” – in 1890 – but later became an anti-Zionist, an Agudath Israel activist, and a baal teshuvah to boot, which was very unusual during this time period. How do you explain his transformation?

First of all, he had a very early receptivity to an idea about Jewish peoplehood – he believed that we have a deep, authentic, integral culture. He viewed it almost in terms of 19th century organic nationalism. Over the course of his career, though, he found Zionism as it became expressed in its political form increasingly unrepresentative of that authentic culture.

He became a baal teshuvah in his late 40s, early 50s. Now, we don’t know how that happened, but I would say as a historian that he was fixated on this idea of an authentic Jewish identity and moved closer and closer with time to the notion that this identity is rooted in Torah and the historical religious experience of the Jewish people.

Why did Birnbaum turn anti-Zionist?

His connection to the Orthodox world was primarily through Vishnitz, and Vishnitz was very active in the early days of the Agudah, which was culturally anti-Zionist. Now, when I say anti-Zionist, I don’t mean Neturei Karta. The Agudah was functionally anti-Zionist because it saw Zionism, as it was being practiced, as being really antagonistic to religion. But Agudah didn’t have a problem with people moving to Israel, and they didn’t even have a problem with some kind of organized settlement in Israel. In fact, in the late 1920s and into the ‘30s, the Agudah was very instrumental in helping people get out of Europe and into Israel.

In a political context, most contemporary Jews associate the name Birnbaum with Nathan’s grandson, Jacob Birnbaum, founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. Would Nathan Birnbaum have been proud of his grandson?

I think Yaakov Birnbaum is in so many ways a real heir to his grandfather’s legacy. His spirit, the depth of his conviction…. I mean, the man really sacrificed everything with the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. That’s what Nathan Birnbaum was like. So I think he would’ve looked at Yaakov and just applauded him as kindred spirit.

I should add that in an article in the early 1930s Nathan Birnbaum wrote that his biggest concern was the threat of communism facing frum Jews in Russia. He was afraid that communism would spread to Germany and the rest of Europe and that frum Jews would be in the crosshairs. So this concern for the Jews of Russia is a thread that runs from Nosson to Yaakov.