To Be or Not to Be...Chosen

Dear God, You have chosen us from among the nations.

Why did you have to pick on the Jews?

Yiddish Proverb

Biblical Sources

Chosenness invoked in Jewish Practice

Blessing over the Torah scroll

Praised are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who chose us from among the nations and gave us God's Torah. Praised are you, Adonai, who gives the Torah

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלקֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם. אֲשֶׁר בָּחַר בָּנוּ מִכָּל הָעַמִּים. וְנָתַן לָנוּ אֶת תּורָתו. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה', נותֵן הַתּורָה:

A Superiority Complex?

Lou Silberman, Encyclopedia Judaica, "Chosen People"

The more extreme, and exclusive interpretations of the doctrine of election among Jewish thinkers, were partly the result of reaction to oppression by the non-Jewish world. The more the Jew was forced to close in on himself, to withdraw into the imposed confines of the ghetto, the more he tended to emphasize Israel's difference from the cruel gentile without. This type of interpretation reaches its height in the Kabbalistic idea that while the souls of Israel stem from God, the souls of gentiles are merely of base material.

Mordecai M. Kaplan, The Future of the American Jew (1948)

The idea of race or national superiority exercises divisive influences generating suspicion and hatred....We cannot assume that Israel must at all times possess that spirit to a higher degree than other people....Thank God I had had the courage to go through with the excision of such a cancerous growth from the Jewish consciousness.

Marcia Falk, The Book of Blessings (1996)

The idea of Israel as God's chosen people... is a key concept in rabbinic Judaism. Yet it is particularly problematic for many Jews today, in that it seems to fly in the face of monotheistic belief that all humanity is created in the divine image—and hence, all humanity is equally loved and valued by God... I find it difficult to conceive of a feminist Judaism that would incorporate it in its teaching: the valuing of one people over and above others is all too analogous to the privileging of one sex over another.

Alternative Approaches

Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, Italy, 1475-1550 on Exodus 19:4-6

And you will be a treasure from among all peoples - Although all humans are important to Me [as the rabbis say in Ethics of the Fathers 3:18: 'Humans are beloved because they were created in God's image'], you will be treasured from among them.

Because Mine is all the earth - and the difference between you exists in smaller or bigger amounts despite the fact that the whole earth is Mine since the Righteous of the Nations are important to Me without a doubt.

"Are Jews Chosen?" - Aryeh Bernstein

Sh'ma Journal, February 2015

If we want to promote a non-chauvinistic sense of chosenness, we need to articulate that vision more clearly.

Here’s my stab at it: The association of chosenness with superiority reflects the faulty assumption that what I know is all there is to be known, that since I can testify to our chosenness because I remember Sinai, and since I have no personal knowledge of anyone else’s chosenness, therefore, we must be the only people to have been chosen.

However, other peoples know things we don’t know and have their own inspiration. Our covenant is no evidence of superiority. The reason non-Jews cannot testify to Sinai is simply that they weren’t there. I mean that poetically; I’ll translate this into prose: Culture exists and inheritors of a culture have something unique to contribute to the world. It would be spiritually colonialist for me to testify to any other people’s chosenness or revelation. My role is to listen and take people at their word, at their testimony to their experience, just as I hope they’ll take my word and listen to my testimony of my experience.

The character of this chosenness is our unique, particular story. When we are called to the Torah, we say, “Praised are You… God… Who chose us from among the nations by giving us the Torah.” But all nations—all humanity—are responsible for a universal ethics as encapsulated by the seven Noahide laws that ordain core guidelines of civilized, human life.

Every nation must sustain an ethical culture. As Jews, we must sustain the particular ethical culture shaped by having been slaves in Egypt, guided through the desert, etc. We are chosen to serve as we are and it seems as though everyone else probably is, too.

"If Jews Are Chosen, What About the Rest of Us?" - Lynda Schwartz

Sh'ma Journal, February 2015

When I married my husband more than 20 years ago, I did not become a Jew, but I became part of the Jewish community. Over the years, I have had warm, enriching and sometimes transcendent experiences with Jewish life, most recently when we celebrated our twins’ b’nei mitzvah. But I recognize that interfaith families feel barriers to engagement in Jewish life. We have a hard time finding rabbis to officiate at our weddings; we may, initially, feel like an outsider in the synagogue and ill-equipped to raise our children as Jews — even when we want to. We bump up against negative and ambivalent attitudes, and we hear people say that families like ours are a problem for the Jewish people.

Sometimes those attitudes are fueled by a tribal sensibility. I think it is time to set aside such insular thinking about who is in the tribe, and focus instead on the blessings and opportunities that the “new-to-Jewish” bring to the community: our struggles, our questions, our energies, and our hopes for our children.

Everyone who participates in Jewish community is one of the “choosing people,” either a Jew or an ally. Forced to make explicit choices about our religious and communal life, interfaith families face both everyday and existential dilemmas: Do I participate in my sister’s neon colored plastic Easter egg hunt? Should I say kaddish for my Lutheran father? Should I laugh at a Jewish joke? What does God want from me? As “choosing people,” we question and ponder, debate and reconcile. We wrestle with love and religion, and our choices shape our lives.

Even a traditional view of chosenness should inspire a confident engagement with those who are new-to-Jewish. If there is a special responsibility to exemplify Jewish principles and ethical values, it cannot be for the benefit of insiders only. Everything I know about Judaism I have gleaned from the privilege of living within this community and learning by doing. As I navigate the challenges of daily life, I suspect that it hardly matters whether I am one of the chosen people. After all, the Torah’s greatest challenge is the same for all of us who choose to accept it, whether Jews or fellow travelers: to live lives of meaning that exemplify its values.