Marla Maples, Donald Trump’s second wife, revealed in a new interview that the president carries an Aramaic copy of the Zohar’s Book of Pinchas inside his clothing, pressed against his heart. Speaking with Channel 12’s Jonathan Rieger, Maples said the mystical text serves a specific purpose in Trump’s life: “protection and healing.”
“He carries with him the Book of Pinchas, the Book of Zohar, in Aramaic. He puts it over his heart, inside, for protection and healing,” Maples said.
Maples said aspects of Judaism carried her through the most dangerous moment of her own life. She described being kidnapped at gunpoint in Nigeria roughly two decades ago. Three armed men forced her group to the ground. In that moment, she said, she turned to the words of the Shema, Judaism’s central declaration of faith: “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad” — “Hear, Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). “I had to let go and surrender,” Maples recalled. “I lay there, and what came to my mind was the Shema prayer… And then they just left.” She said she recites the prayer every morning.
Maples described a broader spiritual life shaped by two decades of study at the Kabbalah Center. She said she has kept kosher for more than twenty years and has observed Shabbat for years as well, adding that Trump’s daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism meant “Donald was exposed to it a lot.” Maples has made repeated trips to Israel, including extended stays in Safed, the city that became the historical center of Kabbalistic study, and visits to the graves of Jewish religious figures. “As a Christian, I wanted to understand Israel,” she said.
In the war that began on October 7, Maples did not hold back. “The antisemitism we see here in the United States is heartbreaking; it makes no sense,” she said. “I pray and send light.” She said she has been moved by how Israelis united in the aftermath of the attack.
Family ties bind Maples to Israel in ways beyond religious practice. Her daughter, Tiffany Trump, married Michael Boulos, whose father, Massad Boulos, serves as a Trump adviser on Africa and the Middle East. Maples said she believes Trump wants peace rather than war, and described warm relations with Melania Trump, with whom she said she regularly exchanges messages. She said Tiffany has grown close with Trump’s older children, Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, and that the extended family now spends holidays together.
Maples is also entering the Israeli market directly. She is developing a wellness venture with Israeli entrepreneur Niv Yaakobi, set to launch first in Israel in Hebrew. She named Israeli singer Eden Ben Zaken, with whom she has worked, as her favorite Israeli performer.
Raised a Southern Baptist in Cohutta, Georgia, Maples continues to identify with Christianity. The Daily Beast has reported that she attends church regularly while keeping Shabbat, eating kosher, and studying Kabbalah, a combination that places her among a small but visible group of Christian Zionists whose spiritual lives have become deeply intertwined with Jewish practice and the land of Israel.
The image Maples paints is unusual by any standard: an American president, raised outside Jewish tradition, carrying an Aramaic mystical text over his heart because a woman who once shared his life believed in its power to protect him. Whether or not that belief moves a reader personally, the instinct behind it is not foreign to the Bible. Words placed upon the heart, spoken in danger, worn on the body — these are not new ideas. They are as old as Sinai.
