Silent gratitude isn’t good enough
American novelist Gertrude Stein famously said, “Silent gratitude isn’t worth very much to anyone.”
On the morning of June 23, 2025, we learned that the U.S. Air Force had bombed Iran’s nuclear weapons factories in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. We should all thank President Trump. He fulfilled the sacred promise of “Never Again” that is deeply etched in the Jewish psyche. President Trump, more than anyone else, has acted with skill and fortitude to prevent another Holocaust.
Dayenu is a cheery song traditionally sung at the Passover Seder and that declares in gratitude that each miracle benefiting the nascent Jewish people in their Exodus from Egypt …would have been enough. President Trump deserves a Dayenu.
Now that the remaining Israeli hostages, living and deceased, are expected to return, we should again thank President Trump for his sophisticated “Peace Plan” that ultimately pressured Hamas to release them. His art of the deal methodologies and his collaboration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu masterfully engineered the end of the war in Gaza and crafted a path to peace in a region known for intractable conflicts.
No doubt President Trump deserves another chorus of Dayenu.
But can those disliking Donald Trump join in thanking him? The deafening silence from the angry “…CEASE FIRE NOW…” progressive, woke, liberal detractors tell the story of what the issue was really…and it wasn’t the Palestinian people.
After the Hamas massacre on October 7th, 2023, President Joe Biden’s initial support of Israel was compelling. But we soon saw his equivocating, embargoes, and second-guessing Israel that was fighting a seven-front war. After President Trump’s second inauguration Israel benefited from a steady, loyal alliance.
After the Gaza War began, the street riots and campus insurrections favoring Hamas and the Palestinians revealed a perverse inversion of right and wrong. The Biden Administration’s passivity allowed the antisemitic and anti-Zionist chaos to become a raging fire. By contrast, in Trump’s second term, the White House Fact Sheet declared his, “…forceful and unprecedented steps to combat antisemitism.”
President Trump had said, “My promise to Jewish Americans is this: With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.” His legislation and executive orders, helped to suppress acts of public disorder and antisemitism. Universities soon were targeted for their tolerating antisemitism.
Surely the besieged American Jews owed Trump a rousing cry of Dayenu.
In President Trump’s first term, the U.S. Embassy moved to Jerusalem, he canceled the dangerous Iran deal JCPOA, recognized the Golan Heights sovereignty and negotiated the Abraham Accords. All this was in stark contrast to President Barack Obama’s ambivalence and his parting shot of an abstention vote on the anti-Israel United Nations Resolution 2334.
That’s when the first Dayenu for President Trump should have been sung.
Sadly, too many Jewish organizations have not sufficiently voiced their gratitude. Their lack of appreciation is most likely due to hyper-partisan political animus. Your saying thank you would be construed as admitting that the Orange Man wasn’t quite the monster he was purported to be. Saying thank you would be tantamount to admitting that he alone, and not the others who garnered your support, bumper stickers and votes, had the steely resolve to protect Israel and the American Jewish community.
Find out if your rabbis, the recipients of your Jewish philanthropy, trustees of your college, and political leaders you voted for have “officially” praised President Trump’s heroic actions. If they have not, ask why not. Make your objections noisy if they won’t.
Immanuel Kant, one of the important thinkers of the Enlightenment, wrote, “Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.”
More to the point, no matter what are your politics, thank President Trump because of all he has done for America, for Israel and for the Jews.
Make Yourself Grateful Again.