For hundreds of years, Jews have been exceptional in their loyalty to the state in which they live. Whenever they have been given a chance to be patriots they have done so. Despite the antisemitism of the time, 100,000 Jews fought for Germany in World War I, with 12,000 killed, some by British and French Jewish soldiers.
Even before emancipation in Britain, Jews expressed loyalty to the state in prayer. In December 1805, Rabbi Solomon Hirschell gave a sermon in the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, entitled “a General Thanksgiving for the success of His Majesty’s fleet under Lord Nelson, off Trafalgar”.
As we know, services in the UK include a prayer for the royal family. At weddings and bar mitzvahs the loyal toast is usually sung with gusto, often to the amazement of non-Jewish guests.
Princess Margaret found out about our customs more than 30 years ago. “In 1990, she was attending a service marking the 50th anniversary of Maidenhead synagogue and was struck by the fact that we read a prayer for the good health and wise counsel of the Queen,” Rabbi Jonathan Romain wrote in the JC at the time.
“When I explained that the prayer was not a one-off but recited every Sabbath in every synagogue in Britain, she remarked: ‘How lovely! They don’t do that for us in church; I’ll tell my sister.’”
The prayer goes back centuries. Samuel Pepys’s diary of 14 October 1663 mentions a visit to the Creechurch Lane Synagogue for Sephardi Jews at Simchas Torah: “In the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugal [he means Portuguese] but the prayer like the rest in Hebrew.” It is also international. The earliest known Jewish formulation for a royal family is from 11th century Worms: “May He who blessed our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob bless our exalted Kaiser.”
In Australia, the prayer is for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia. It includes “the legislators and leaders of Australia and its States and Territories”.
Rabbi Raymond Apple of Sydney makes the point that “everywhere, one comes across tattered siddurim from many lands which pray for kaisers, czars, princes and presidents. Indeed, a history of government could be written around these Jewish prayer books”. Prayers for rulers were being offered as far back as the Spartans, he adds.
Rabbi Andy Vogel of Temple Sinai, Brookline, USA, reported finding an old machzor, a High Holy Day prayer book, published in 1895 in Petrokov. Turning to the Torah service, he saw the prayer for the Tsar, beautifully composed: “May the One… who is the Ruler of rulers… bless and keep, guard and aid, exalt and raise the Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovich, and his widowed mother, Tsarina Marie Feodorovna… (and various others… May God save them from all harm and pain, and may all their enemies fall before them.
“And may the Merciful One put in the heart of the Tsar compassion and good deeds for the People of Israel”.
However, with state organised pogroms and the mass expulsions of Jews from Russia, it is doubtful whether any Jews said this with any gusto.
Far from it. As the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof says: “God Keep the Tsar well… away from us”.
Theodore Herzl, in his 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State, wrote: “In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes super-loyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens.”
History has shown over the last 100 years how a number of Jews were mistaken in their loyalty, not the least German Jews. So Herzl had a point, to put it mildly.
But whatever Herzl may say, it is a natural thing for Jews to be loyal to the country of which they are citizens, and therefore to say a prayer for the rulers of their country.
In the UK, this relationship between the monarchy and its Jewish subjects has been fraught (we only need to remember the expulsion in 1290) at times. In latter days, though, things have much improved, especially since the reign of Queen Victoria, who knighted Moses Montefiore and whose favourite Prime Minister was Benjamin Disraeli.
Historian Lucy Moore writes of Edward VII: “His close friends were as often Catholic or Jewish, nouveau riche or foreign, as old-school British aristocrats; the common thread between them was that they were fun-loving and rich, not respectable and grand”. Indeed, he tried to intercede on behalf of the Jews in Russia with the Tsar. And Prince Philip’s mother became“Righteous Amongst The Nations” for her actions in World War II.
Long will we continue the Prayer for the Royal Family.
Tony Zendle is a member of the Jewish Historical Society of England and the author of ‘The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia’
