The recent in your face comings and goings of President Trump's two special envoys to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff (born 1957) and Jared Kushner (born 1981), both Jewish, has brought into focus and into the spotlight one of the oldest, famous and fabled government positions known as the Court Jew.
The role of Court Jew was widely used in the Middle Ages by Christian monarchs and rulers who wished to avail themselves of the services of prominent Jewish bankers and middle men to facilitate a variety of financial and political functions when Christians fulfilling such roles were hard to come by or were forbidden to do so by the Church.
In truth, the role of Court Jew predates even the Middle Ages if one looks to the Hebrew Bible. It is personified in the story of the rise to power of Joseph in the court of Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt. The Torah tells of how the Hebrew Israelite slave Joseph was appointed the supreme plenipotentiary just below the rank of Pharaoh to administer the house of Pharaoh and to ensure that Egypt would be spared from the years of famine that would afflict the entire region. This phenomenon of Jews playing a key role in the government affairs of non-Jews has played itself out time again throughout the ages until our own times.
According to the narrative of the Torah, Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses) was a Court Jew at the outset of his early adult life. He lived as part of Pharaoh's family for a long time enjoying the privileges of Egyptian palace life. He had a leadership role in Egypt and worked to strengthen the influence of the Egyptian empire until one day he was confronted with the existential choice of whether or not to fight to save the life of a non-Egyptian Hebrew Israelite slave. Moshe made the choice to work for the justice of the Children of Israel by standing up for the rights of the Hebrew people he was originally born into.
This is the key challenge that a Court Jew must always face: Does he or she remain loyal to their own people and avoid becoming a sellout - or even worse, a traitor - to his or her birthright heritage and nationality?
After the Egyptian exile and the later destruction of the First Jewish Temple resulting in the exile if the Jewish People to Babylonia, the person of Daniel is another figure who fulfilled his role as a Court Jew in Ancient Babylonia and then later in Ancient Persia, after being taken into captivity and imprisoned by the Babylonians. Daniel is part of a Jewish group of captives, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah who served the Babylonian and Persian monarchs in their royal domains. They were outstanding in never transgressing the Laws of the Torah and remained loyal Jews throughout their captivity.
The famous Queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai found themselves in the positions of Court Jews in Ancient Persia. After Esther is captured and is favored by King Achashverosh, who did not know that she was a Jewess, to become his new queen of Persia. She is challenged by Mordechai to reveal her true identity to the king in order to save the Jewish People from the genocidal decrees of Haman.
Mordechai's message to Esther, as recorded in the Scroll of Esther, remains the ultimate test and clarion call to any Jew, like Esther, who find themselves Court Jews who must decide if they will still maintain and retain their loyalties to the Jewish People or not:
"Mordecai sent them to answer Esther: 'Think not that you shall escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if you altogether hold your peace at this time, then will relief and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish; and who knows whether you came to the royal estate for such a time as this?'" יג וַיֹּאמֶר מָרְדֳּכַי, לְהָשִׁיב אֶל-אֶסְתֵּר: אַל-תְּדַמִּי בְנַפְשֵׁךְ, לְהִמָּלֵט בֵּית-הַמֶּלֶךְ מִכָּל-הַיְּהוּדִים. יד כִּי אִם-הַחֲרֵשׁ תַּחֲרִישִׁי, בָּעֵת הַזֹּאת--רֶוַח וְהַצָּלָה יַעֲמוֹד לַיְּהוּדִים מִמָּקוֹם אַחֵר, וְאַתְּ וּבֵית-אָבִיךְ תֹּאבֵדוּ; וּמִי יוֹדֵעַ--אִם-לְעֵת כָּזֹאת, הִגַּעַתְּ לַמַּלְכוּת (Esther 4:13-14).
Joseph, Moshe, Daniel, Esther and Mordechai shine out as the ultimate role models and paragons of the ideal good Court Jews because their moral and spiritual compasses rooted them in the Torah, true Judaism and a clear vision that they stood on the side of God's true Will.
Unfortunately there are also historical examples of Court Jews whose role is more ambiguous and sometimes even dangerous for the Jewish People.
Moving on to Graeco-Roman times, entire sectors of the Jewish People fell victim to the phenomenon of assimilation or Hellenization as it was known (Mityavnim in Hebrew) with many becoming not just Court Jews of the Greeks and Romans but going much further by throwing off their Jewish identity and instead taking on the Greek and Roman way of life and betraying their own Jewish People.
Notably, the Jewish Greek philosopher Philo (20 BCE-50 CE) reinterpreted the Torah through the lens of Greek Philosophy, and Josephus (37 CE- 100 CE) who went over from the Jewish side to serve the Roman Flavian Emperors as probably the best known Court Jew of his times.
Throughout the rise of Christianity and Islam there were famous Court Jews who remained loyal to their Judaism and the Jewish People, yet skillfully and adroitly served their Christian and Islamic masters, walking an existential tightrope as it were. Some of the most famous were:
-Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508) who served as an important financier in the courts of the Christian Portuguese and Spanish monarchs. He tried to save the Jews from being expelled in 1492 and chose to go into exile away from Spain and Portugal rather than betray his own people.
-The famous RAMBAM, known as Maimonides (1138-1204), was recognized as the Nagid, or "king", over all the Sephardic Jews of Egypt in the Middle Ages with access to the Muslim rulers of Egypt as both a Court Jew and Court Physician.
Which brings us to modern times.
Probably the best known Court Jew was the German born Henry Kissinger (1923-2023) who served in the administration of US President Richard Nixon as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State and who was tasked with negotiating peace between the Israelis and the Arabs during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. (It is known now that he allowed Egypt to surprise Israel in that war because he felt that this would make Israel more amenable to compromise - and 2600 IDF soldiers died...)
Since then there have been other American Court Jews who have been tasked with negotiating peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors as special envoys such as Martin Indyk (1951-2024), Dennis Ross (born 1948), Richard Holbrooke (1941-2010) and others. Going back to the times of the US Civil War and the Confederacy there is the Sephardic Jew Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) who served as both Attorney General and Secretary of State.
The list of prominent Jews who served as Court Jews, diplomats, financiers and politicians in many countries is very long and goes beyond the scope of this brief essay.
The most up-dated versions of the Court Jew who is not an Israeli Jew but rather serves the interest of the United States are Steve Witkoff (born 1957) and Jared Kushner (born 1981). These two gentlemen have been tasked by their leader US President Trump to bring peace between the militant terrorist Arabs of Hamas, who are also backed by Islamic states such as Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, and a besieged Israel.
From reports emanating out of the background of the current conflict they have succeeded in tying the hands of the Israelis from entirely eliminating the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip while admittedly forcing Hamas to let go of the last remaining living Israeli hostages as well as some of the bodies of kidnapped Israelis murdered in Hamas captivity.
Behind the scenes reporting reveals the fact that both Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have vast business interests with Arab countries, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, this in the range of billions of dollars. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have invested in joint ventures with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as well as with the greater Trump financial empire.
These types of financial and economic conflict of interest relationships could prejudice and even blind Witkoff and Kushner in acting as genuinely honest brokers between Israel and its Arab enemies.
For two thousand years, until the creation of the modern state of Israel, Court Jews did not have to worry about the fate of the Land of Israel because the bulk of the Jewish nation lived outside of the Land of Israel. Since 1948 that reality has changed and by now the bulk of the Jewish People live in the Land of Israel surrounded by Arab enemies that wish to annihilate them.
Even though Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt during 1978-1979, with Jordan 1994, the Abraham Accords 2020 with UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, still Hamas did not feel itself restrained in attacking Israel on October 7, 2023 with the backing of outside Arab money and power, proving that the peace accords between Israel and the Arabs were only "skin deep" and making it critical that Israel always retain the military, strategic and even tactical upper hand in all spheres. These dangers loom uppermost for Israel and cannot be ameliorated by the promises and machinations of Court Jews not working for the Jewish State.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. From 2017-2024 he was a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York.
He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy.
Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at [email protected]