In last Tuesday’s newsletter, we linked to Michael A. Helfand’s legal analysis of Louisiana’s new law mandating that the Ten Commandments appear in public-school classrooms, the First Amendment issues it raises, and the new approach to these issues arising from recent Supreme Court decisions. Now, Helfand looks at how Orthodox Jews ought to see this shift in constitutional thought. He does so by examining a 1976 sermon, titled “Can We Afford a Praying President?,” delivered by Norman Lamm, one of the great American rabbis of the day:

In that sermon, . . . he argued that the Jewish community’s reluctance flowed from an “uneasiness . . . at the religious expressions of Governor Carter.” As typical, Rabbi Lamm pulled no punches. “I suspect it lies in a dogmatic, doctrinaire secularism that is the dominant attitude in the Jewish community, and that cringes at the prospect that one who is, or seems, deeply religious will become president of this country, even if he is firmly committed to pluralism.”

Lamm believed such an approach was deeply misguided. Referencing the Watergate scandal, Rabbi Lamm contended: “Something has got to be done to restore the integrity of the office of the presidency. The presidency, as we have heard time and again, is the most powerful office on earth. It cannot hurt to entrust the vast powers of this heady office to someone who knows that he is not God.”

It turns out Jews were right to mistrust Jimmy Carter, albeit for different reasons. And by the same token, Lamm seems to have been right to accept Carter’s piety:

Rabbi Lamm laid out—albeit briefly—his vision for separation of church and state in America, which began with the Founding Fathers.

Rabbi Lamm outlined a constitutional approach that may very well track the Supreme Court’s new approach to the First Amendment. Prayers in public school cannot be so sectarian so as to prefer one religious denomination over another. And no child in public school should ever be put in a position where he or she feels coerced to participate in prayer. . . . Put differently, Rabbi Lamm envisioned an America that embraced religion without embracing a religion—and that made room for religion without imposing religion.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.