The CHosen People?

Crown Heights CHabura
June 8, 2021 // כ׳ט בסיון תשפ׳א
Sponsored by Hadar

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903 - 1994), Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (1975)
"If by nature there is something special about a Jew that distinguishes him from the non-Jew, then Judaism is not a task and a vocation but a factual datum. Given facts, as such, are devoid of value, they are axiologically neutral. Values are not rooted in reality; they are objects of aspiration beyond reality toward which one must strive from within reality. It follows that to claim inherent uniqueness for the people of Israel is to deprive this uniqueness of all significance."

Leibowitz, cont.
"In his doctrine of providence, Maimonides conceives of God's providential relation to man as identical with the state of man when he is aware of God. It is identical to it and not just a consequence. Similarly, one might say that the election of the people of Israel ('And the LORD has affirmed this day that you are') is identical with the assumption of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven by the people of Israel ('You have affirmed this day that the LORD is your God').
Accordingly, the uniqueness of the Jewish people--also called the 'holiness' of Israel--is not something that was given to the people as an abiding and enduring possession, but is rather a demand, an assignment and a task with which they are charged--a goal toward which they are to strive eternally, without any guarantee of ever attaining it. The question is not 'Did God bestow holiness upon the Jewish people" but rather, "Is the Jewish people striving toward holiness by assuming the yoke of Torah and Mitzvoth?"

Leibowitz, cont.
"The Judaism of Moses as arduous. It means knowing that we are not a holy people. The Judaism of Korach is very comforting. It allows every Jew to be proud and boast that he is a member of the holy people, which is holy by its very nature. This obligates him to nothing....He who empties the concept of the Jewish people of its religious content (like David Ben Gurion) and still describes it as Am Segulah turns this concept into an expression of racist chauvinism."

Michael Wyschogrod (1928 - 2015), The Body of Faith (1989)
"Maimonides' demythologization of the concept of God is un biblical and ultimately dangerous to Jewish faith. Jewish faith cannot survive if a personal relation between the Jew and God is not possible. But no personal relation is possible with an Aristotelian Un moved Mover. The God who appears in the Bible is a very specific person with certain definite character traits. Because man is also such a person, the drama of the Bible is the interaction of this God with a wide variety of persons and one specific people: Israel...
...The election of the people of Israel as the people of God constitutes the sanctification of a natural family. God could have chosen a spiritual criterion: the election of all those who have faith or who obey God's commandments. The liberal mind would find such an election far more congenial. But God did not choose this path. He chose the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob....
...Behind [the question of Jewish chosenness] lurks the pain of exclusion...Would it not have been better for God not to have favored Israel, so as not to hurt the other peoples of the world?
This leads us to think about the wonder of love. Western man has, as we have seen, distinguished between eros and agape. Eros is sensual love, the love of man for woman, where jealousy is a possibility. In eros the other is a means toward the pleasure of the self, so that eros is really self-love. Agape is the love of parent for child...True agape demands nothing in return because it is a love truly directed to the other, to his welfare and prosperity, to what is good for him rather than the pleasure of the one who loves. Agape is thus charity in the purest sense...
...The election of Israel is thus a sign of the humanity of God. Had he so willed it, he could have played a more godly role, refusing favorites and loving all his creatures impartially. His love would then have been a far less vulnerable one because impartiality signifies a certain remoteness, the absence of that consuming passion that is a sign of need of the other. Herein resides the inhumanity of agape and the humanity of eros. Agape demands nothing in return. It asks only to give, never to receive. However noble this sounds at first hearing, it must quickly be realized that it also implies an incredible position of strength. To be able only to give, never to need, never to ask for anything in return for what we give, is a position that truly befits a God...
...The love with which God has chosen to love man is a love understandable to man. It is therefore a love very much aware of human response. God has thereby made himself vulnerable: he asks for man's response and is hurt when it is not forthcoming. For the same reason, God's love is not undifferentiated, having the same quality toward all his children. God's love is directed toward who we are."