At the journal Cross-Currents , N. Daniel Korobkin explains why Orthodox Jews should pray for the government :
[W]e decided to daven in the “frummer” shuls, the ones that omitted those newfangled prayers that had nothing to do with Yiddishkeit, and that were therefore not printed in the “authentic” siddurim. Pledge of Allegiance? Ha! That’s for the goyim. No child of mine will start his day pledging fealty to a country whose values are morally corrupt!This is where we got it wrong, and this is where our rabbis strayed, whether through acts of commission or omission.
In fact, the Prayer for the Welfare of the Government is a tradition that goes back many centuries. The first halachic work that mentions it is the 14th century Siddur commentary by Rabbi David Avudraham, who writes that by his time it was customary for communities to pray for the king and to ask Hashem to give him dominion over his enemies. The Avudraham bases this custom on a verse in Jeremiah. After the Jews were exiled to Babylonia, the prophet sent a message to his brethren (29:9): “Seek out the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray on its behalf, for its welfare will become your welfare.” This, continues the Avudraham, is the Biblical basis for the Mishnah’s mandate to “Pray for the welfare of the government” (Avos 3:4).
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So what happened? If the Prayer for the Government is such an old institution and has been recited by Gedolim for centuries, how is it that it has fallen out of style? Why isn’t there a Prayer for the Government in so many standard siddurim printed in the 20th century? Why do so many fine, deeply committed shuls and yeshivos omit the prayer?
There may be many reasons for this: World War I – where Jewish brethren were pitted against each other – or the Shoah may be causes for resentment against secular authorities. But regardless of the historical reasons, one thing is clear: We are reaping the bitter fruits of some Jews’ utter disregard for the secular government. For American Jews this is doubly tragic, for not only have we not been persecuted as Jews in this country, we have also been granted opportunities of religious freedom unprecedented in all of our 2,000-year Diaspora history. To snub America in this way is simply wrong and it has brought out the worst in us.
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