Jewish liturgy includes a curse against our enemies. We can be OK with that. Right?

Rabbi Kaunfer: This blessing is simple and straightforward. It identifies a political entity — signified by the word "malkhut,” or kingdom — that must be uprooted — “te’aker,” in Hebrew. Israel does not — and has never — existed in a world without enemies. The core DNA of our daily prayer includes a moment to recognize this threat and pray for our enemies to be neutralized.

And yet I have not always connected with this prayer. I grew up in an era in which I believed we were hurtling towards peace — with Communist countries, and with Arab nations. When I was younger, I often felt this line to be obsolete, even a little embarrassing. It seemed to represent an old view of reality, irrelevant in a world in which peace had broken out. At best, I could reinterpret this line (following Rabbeinu Bachya, the medieval Spanish commentator) as a reference to our own evil inclination, that we hoped to subdue.

Some say that this blessing was added to the original Eighteen Benedictions as a Nineteenth one. It was ordained by Rabban Gamliel and his Bait Din in Yavneh, according to the text of Shmuel HaKattan, its author (Masechet Berachot 28:b). It is directed against the early Christians who informed against Jews to the Roman authorities after the destruction of the Second Temple, causing them to be put to an excruciatingly painful death.

Not the “wicked,” but “wickedness.” This particular prayer is based on the Talmudic interpretation of the verse, “Let sins be terminated on earth and the wicked will be no more” (Psalms 104:36).

The internal enemies of the Jews, against whom this prayer was originally directed, disappeared within a short time.

"As the Jewish studies scholar Ruth Langer has shown, while external authorities introduced censored versions of this blessing starting in the Middle Ages, already in the 19th century many Jews themselves were sheepish about reciting it and self-censored. In America, this blessing was removed from Reform liturgy for more than 100 years, and it never appeared in Reconstructionist liturgy. Following censored texts from the Middle Ages, Conservative and most Orthodox prayer books altered the “kingdom of insolence” or "wickedness" to simply read “the insolent” or "the wicked." Over the years, I have heard prayer leaders recite this blessing in a subdued tone, saying it only out of obligation to tradition, while attempting to literally mute its message.

But we have learned time and again that a world of peace without political enemies is far from our reality. Indeed, the Reform movement restored this blessing in the 1990s, including the line asking for the “malkhut zadon,” the kingdom of insolence, to be smashed."

Note which elements this new version of the blessings keeps and how it shapes them.

From Siddur Mishkan Tefilah, Weekday services, Blessings of the Amidah.

Given that this is based on the classical Ashkenazi version, note how the translation adheres to and deviates from the Hebrew.

From Siddur Lev Shalem, Weekday services, Blessings of the Amidah.

Who are all these people?

Enron comes from the same root (ayin-kuf-resh), which means to uproot, and exile is a state of being uprooted.