For the past several years, in lecture after lecture, prominent Jewish educator and international lecturer Rabbi Mendel Kessin has been calling President Trump the tov she’b’Aisav – the good part of the Biblical personality Esau. In Jewish tradition, Aisav will do teshuva (repent) at the End of Days and cooperate with the Jewish people. According to Kessin, with all of his actions in support of Israel, President Trump is fulfilling that prophecy.

In a recent Torah lecture delivered on October 14, 2020, Kessin delved into the spiritual secret behind Trump’s success. “People don’t understand Trump. He exhibits certain personality traits, character traits which turn off a lot of people,” Kessin established.

He went on to raise the question that baffles a lot of people, even Trump supporters. “Why did God pick a man that has such character traits as Trump, where people view that as disgraceful? It’s not presidential. This is not mature. What’s the underlying reason?” he asked.

His answer reveals a hidden secret about the way God runs the world.

In the opening chapter of the Book of Job, God is portrayed as being in a conversation with the Satan. In Jewish theology, the Satan works for God and has the God-given role of enforcing strict justice.

However, since God is all powerful, He has a way of circumventing the objections of the Satan. This is known in Hebrew as shochad d’Satan which means a bribery to the Satan. In other words, when God wants to accomplish something to which the Satan objects on the basis of strict justice, God offers the Satan a kind of bribe to get him to agree to God’s plan.

This, claimed Rabbi Kessin, is how we can better understand the successes of President Trump, despite the unrelenting criticisms of his detractors.

He explained, “Before God was about to elect (so to speak) Trump to be the tov she’b’Aisav, the Satan appears, [as] always before [an advance in the] the messianic process and says, ‘Wait a minute. You can’t do this! The Jews don’t deserve to be redeemed. So God does a strategy called shochad d’Satan – a bribery to the Satan.”

On the one hand, God wants to bring the redemption already. On the other hand, He created the Satan to uphold justice. Therefore, He can’t just dismiss the claims of the Satan. And so God offered a compromise to the Satan.

Kessin paraphrased the compromise that occurred in Heaven between God and His staff member, the Satan.

“I’m going to put up a guy that’s going to tremendously help Israel. He’ll do the job, but there is going to be a tremendous barrier. People are going to look at his personality and say, ‘What?! We should vote for a guy like this?’”

As Kessin explained the matter, the Satan agreed to the compromise God offered, assuming that the unrefined personality of Trump, and the significant opposition that will be directed towards him as a result, will prevent him from accomplishing anything significant.

This, according to Kessin, is how we “end[ed] up with a president who people despise on a personal level but who has been wildly successful.” Kessin referred to Trump as “probably the greatest president in US history, in terms of what he’s done.”

Beyond that, Kessin openly predicted that President Trump will win the 2020 election, offering several reasons to support that prediction.

His first, and perhaps most significant reason to expect that President Trump will be reelected, is that God is clearly protecting him. “Every day, there’s another slander against Trump, yet for some reason, Trump survives. Not only that, God gives him the energy not to go into utter despair,” Kessin elaborated. 

In addition, Kessin emphasized that the job Trump was assigned to do is not finished. “Since Trump represents the tov she’b’Aisav, the good part of Esau, which is needed at the End of Days, if Trump doesn’t win, that will mean that the beginning of redemption will come to an end.”

“Would God do that?” he asked incredulously.