Back in July 10th 2023, Trump was given the Torah Crown, honouring him as the ‘King of the Jews’…
In 1979 a man by the name of Leslie Donald Epstein, published a book titled ‘King of the Jews’. It is a novel set in a Jewish ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland during the Holocaust.
The book’s first chapter is titled “The Golden Age.”
At the centre of the story is I.C. Trumpelman, a charismatic con man who is appointed head of the ghetto’s Jewish Council, the Judenrat. Granted authority over his fellow Jews, Trumpelman gradually builds his own authoritarian regime, placing his image on money and stamps and deciding who will be sacrificed to the Nazis in the belief that doing so might save others.
Among the other characters is Mosk, a wealthy mill owner and influential businessman within the ghetto.
As his power grows, the line between survival, collaboration and tyranny becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish.
So, here’s a novel written nearly half a century ago by a man named Epstein, featuring characters named Trumpelman and Mosk, and beginning with a chapter called “The Golden Age.”
On July 10, 2023, former President Donald Trump was honored by the Israel Heritage Foundation at an event held at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. The foundation, a U.S.-based Orthodox-run nonprofit that promotes Holocaust remembrance, Jewish identity, and strong U.S.-Israel relations, presented Trump with the symbolic “Crown of Jerusalem.” This ornate silver Torah scroll crown, or Keter Yerushalayim, was encased in glass and inscribed with a verse from Psalm 136:1, praising God’s eternal kindness—a gesture reflecting deep appreciation for Trump’s actions on behalf of Israel and the global Jewish community.
The event brought together around 150 guests, including Orthodox Jewish leaders, members of Congress, and high-profile political allies. Rabbi David Katz, the executive director of the foundation, delivered a speech honoring Trump as a world leader who had consistently defended Israel and American Jewry. Dr. Joseph Frager, the group’s executive vice president, elaborated that the crown represented a token of gratitude for what he described as Trump’s “heroic and extraordinary” service to the State of Israel.
Despite the timing of the event falling during the Jewish “Three Weeks”—a traditional period of mourning when celebratory music is often avoided—the organizers proceeded with a formal ceremony that included national anthems, live music, and traditional drum performances. This reflected not just the foundation’s admiration for Trump but a conscious decision to make the event spiritually and politically significant.
Several U.S. lawmakers were present to lend their support, including Representatives Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma. Zionist Organization of America president Mort Klein also attended. Congressman Burchett remarked that Trump had shown unprecedented support for Israel during his presidency and that many in the Orthodox community deeply respected his leadership.
In his acceptance speech, Trump reflected on his record in the Middle East, highlighting his administration’s move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He pointed out that the warnings he had received about global fallout from these decisions had not materialized, reinforcing his belief that his bold moves were justified and strategically sound.
Trump also emphasized his administration’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, calling it “the worst deal” ever made, and criticized current U.S. policy as being too lenient toward Iran. He credited his actions with weakening Iran’s power and asserted that his administration had done more to ensure Israeli security than any other in modern history.
The former president celebrated the signing of the Abraham Accords as a groundbreaking achievement in regional diplomacy. He noted that four countries had signed on before he left office and claimed that “virtually every country in the Middle East” was ready to follow suit had he remained in power. This, he argued, was a missed opportunity for lasting peace.
Trump also joked about his perceived popularity, stating that while he polls around 99% in Israel, his approval among American Jews remains disproportionately low, somewhere around 26% to 28%. He expressed surprise and frustration at this discrepancy, asserting that he should have full support from Jewish voters in the U.S. given his pro-Israel record.
Florida businessman Lewis Topper introduced Trump with a biblical reference, saying, “only 20% of the Jews left Egypt to follow Moses,” implying that Trump’s support from the Jewish community was in historical alignment. This set a spiritual and messianic tone for the event that resonated deeply with many attendees.
Online, particularly on Reddit and other forums, some users drew apocalyptic or prophetic conclusions about the crown. One commenter wrote that the “Crown of Jerusalem” aligned with biblical prophecy, referencing Revelation 6:2—“a crown was given unto him”—and described the event as a sign of the times.
Others linked the crown and Trump’s “Prince of Peace” menorah gift from earlier years as dual symbols of messianic fulfillment. These interpretations, while controversial, highlighted the deep religious and spiritual significance some communities attach to Trump’s role in global events.
For supporters, the ceremony wasn’t just about politics—it was about legacy. By honoring Trump with such a symbolic religious artifact, the Israel Heritage Foundation cast him not merely as a past president, but as a historic figure in Jewish destiny.
The "Crown of Jerusalem" event thus became a flashpoint: a moment of celebration, controversy, and spiritual reflection that showcased the power of political symbolism and the deep emotional ties some American and Israeli Jews continue to hold with Trump’s presidency.
Mr. Epstein based his protagonist, Isaiah Chaim Trumpelman, on Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a real-life figure who served in the Lodz ghetto of Poland as chairman of the Jewish council, or Judenrat, an administration established by the Germans to carry out Nazi policy.
Eight decades after the end of the Holocaust, the Jewish councils that existed within Nazi ghettos remain a deeply controversial matter. Many council members sought to use their positions to help fellow Jews survive, but they also faced dilemmas about whether and how much to comply with Nazi orders, including those involving deportations from the ghettos to death camps.
According to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and memorial in Jerusalem, Rumkowski was “torn between helping the Jewish population in the ghetto survive, and giving in to the demands of the German authorities.”
The museum describes him as “one of the most controversial of all Judenrat leaders,” however, because he “often cooperated with the Germans and treated the Jews of his ghetto dictatorially.” Rumkowski, like other Jews in the Lodz ghetto, was ultimately deported with his family and murdered at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland.
Mr. Epstein farcically depicted Trumpelman as a tyrannical charlatan who takes pleasure in printing his portrait on ghetto currency and postage stamps, and who grandiosely rides a white horse around the squalor that surrounds him. Yet the character was not without nuance; Trumpelman genuinely cares for the children in an orphanage that he oversees and tries, however ineffectually, to keep the Jews under his authority alive.
“I am merciful in some ways toward Rumkowski, but ultimately condemn him not so much for what he had to do but [for] the sense of power and even fulfillment that doing it gave him,” Mr. Epstein told the Times of Israel in 2017.
“King of the Jews” evoked powerful reactions among readers and critics. Writing in the New York Times, literary critic Robert Alter observed that “no work of fiction has opened up so fully the unbearable moral dilemma in which the Judenrat members found themselves, governing with a pistol at their heads, administering the processes of death, corrupted of course by their awful power, yet trying to preserve life when there was no real way to preserve.”
The critic Anatole Broyard, however, had a less positive interpretation. While acknowledging that Mr. Epstein had “empathetically” engaged with the history of the Holocaust, he characterized Trumpelman as “another Jewish cliché,” a “charismatic rogue, shrewd, sentimental, theatrical, monolithic, adept at mystification.” Mr. Epstein’s attempts at the comic elements of tragicomedy, Broyard wrote, in most cases do not “qualify for the dubious title of black humor.”
Recalling the fury elicited in some quarters by his book, Mr. Epstein said that “it took a toll on me, to be vilified.” Responding to criticism of his work, he told the Associated Press that some of his antagonists objected to the notion of a Jewish writer “washing our dirty laundry in public.”
Mr. Epstein was not religiously observant and said he did not wish to be categorized as a “Jewish writer,” although cultural Judaism flowed through what he described as his “unconscious stream of memories.” He explored his family history in his novel “San Remo Drive” (2003), about the Jacobis, the family of a fictional celebrated screenwriter living in the time and place where Mr. Epstein came of age.
Leslie Donald Epstein was born in Los Angeles on May 4, 1938. He spent part of his boyhood in a mansion that previously belonged to movie star Mary Astor. He had a secular upbringing, telling Newsday years later that he grew up with “Christmas trees, Easter egg hunts, everything but ham for Easter.”
Immersed in the Hollywood milieu, Mr. Epstein recalled seeing Elizabeth Taylor at his parents’ social gatherings and ringing doorbells on Halloween at the home of leading man Gregory Peck.
Mr. Epstein’s father and uncle had a sometimes contentious relationship with Jack Warner and other film executives. During the anti-communist “Red Scare” of the 1950s, the two brothers were investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When they were asked if they had ever joined a subversive organization, they needled their bosses by replying in the affirmative — and citing Warner Brothers.
Rumkowski accrued much power by transforming the ghetto into an industrial base manufacturing war supplies for the Wehrmacht in the mistaken belief that productivity was the key to Jewish survival beyond the Holocaust. The Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944. All remaining prisoners were sent to death camps in the wake of military defeats on the Eastern Front.
As the head of the Judenrat, Rumkowski is remembered for his speech Give Me Your Children, delivered at a time when the Germans demanded his compliance with the deportation of 20,000 children to Chełmno extermination camp. In August 1944, Rumkowski and his family joined the last transport to Auschwitz,[1] and he was murdered there on August 28, 1944, by Jewish Sonderkommando inmates who beat him to death as revenge for his role in the Holocaust. This account of his final moments is confirmed by witness testimonies of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.
Chaim Rumkowski delivering a speech in the ghetto, 1941–42
On German orders Rumkowski delivered a speech on September 4, 1942, pleading with the Jews in the ghetto to give up children 10 years of age and younger, as well as the elderly over 65, so that others might survive. “Horrible, terrifying wailing among the assembled crowd” could be heard, reads the transcriber’s note to his parlance often referred to as: “Give Me Your Children”. Some commentators see this speech as exemplifying aspects of the Holocaust.
A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They [the Germans] are asking us to give up the best we possess – the children and the elderly. I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I’ve lived and breathed with children. I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters! Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers: Give me your children!
