AMERICAN NOTES: A Kingly Prayer

The prayers at the Presidential Inauguration are meant to be mildly inspiring, a celebration of national virtues. At President Nixon's Inauguration, the Baptist, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox prayers all fitted snugly into this tradition, but the Jewish prayer strayed into unfamiliar terrain. Rabbi Seymour Siegel, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and an ardent Nixon campaign worker, delivered a prayer that is customarily reserved for the presence of kings. Its text: "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast given us of thy glory and flesh and blood."

The unusual...