CHAPTER 8         

CHOSENNESS IN JUDAISM

TANAKH

Hebrew Bible presents many layers of meaning in chosenness, and also recognizes its dangerous potential. The book of Genesis makes evident the problem of God’s choosing immediately after it wrestles with the problem of humans’ choosing. We are barely out of Eden when Cain and Abel each offer a sacrifice, but God pays heed only to Abel’s offering. Although no reason is given, I had students who were certain that the text must somewhere indicate Cain offers second-rate produce. Why? It is an interpretation that goes back to late antiquity, a close reading of the biblical text that states, “In the course of time Cain brought an offering to YHWH from the fruit of the soil, and Abel also brought some of the fatty parts of the firstlings of his flock” (Gen. 4:3–4). Wanting to believe that God’s choice has some rationale, we may determine that Abel offers choice cuts of meat. So he brings the best stuff, while Cain just brings stuff.¹ We could just as easily detect that Cain initiates the offering, however, and Abel seems merely to copy his brother. In fact, the text never states that Abel is bringing “an offering to YHWH”; perhaps it is an empty gesture. We do not read it that way because we prefer that God’s choice make sense.

Tanakh, however, is more interested in how human beings respond to God choosing. That is what occupies the bulk of the chapter. God exhorts Cain to control his urge to sin and asks, “Why are you angry, and why is your face fallen?” (Gen. 4:6b). Written on Cain’s face is the pain of feeling “unchosen” and, when he murders Abel, we see the terrible weight of his resentment. Long before any mention of the singular covenant with Israel, the Hebrew Bible illuminates the human conundrum of God choosing.²

Echoes of rivalry for divine favor play out through the narratives of Genesis. With Jacob and Esau, Torah illustrates how pursuit of election can prompt unjust behavior, but we also glimpse the possibility of forgiveness rather than fratricide (Gen. 25, 27, 32–33). In the Joseph novella, chosenness enables the divine plan for blessing to unfold. After Joseph’s dramatic reconciliation with his aggrieved brothers, the covenantal promise is for the first time transmitted to all the siblings, and they become the putative ancestors of the twelve tribes. Joseph as the chosen one, invisibly guided and protected by God, saves the Egyptians and his own people from a prolonged famine in the region. Blessing flows between and among the households of creation . . . until a Pharaoh arises who “does not know Joseph” and he identifies the Israelites as a threat (Gen. 37–50, Exod. 1:8–11).³

The election of Abram (renamed “Abraham” in Gen. 17:5) explicitly invokes this notion of mutual blessing. Called at the outset without explanation, he is promised: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and one who curses you I will damn; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:2–3). Immediately following the passage, however, Abram is forced to leave the land due to famine and his life is endangered. He is childless for many years, learns that his descendants will be enslaved for centuries, and undergoes numerous trials. Clearly, we are not meant to interpret election as a life of ease.⁴ Neither is it a mark of superiority. Although Genesis 18:19 suggests that God singles Abraham out so “he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of YHWH by doing what is right and just,” Genesis commonly presents God’s favor as an act of grace. Abraham is simply a friend of God.⁵

One does not need to be elect to elicit divine favor and have an essential role in God’s plan for creation. The story of Noah presents “a theology that places all people in a relationship of grace and accountability with God,” with divine commitments and commandments in the wake of the Flood.⁶ Ishmael provides a more detailed example: twice God promises to make of him a great nation (Gen. 17:20, 21:18), and he becomes the father of twelve tribes just as Jacob does. Ishmael carries the sign of the covenant (circumcision), and repeatedly the text mentions God’s blessing upon him. Yet Tanakh does not present him as an ancestor of the “chosen people.”

The chosenness of the people Israel is generally tightly bound with the covenant at Sinai: “Now then, if you will hearken well to My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be to Me a special treasure among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5–6a).⁷ This is the language of aspiration, nurturing a special relationship with God by creating a national religious life devoted to divine service. Revelation at Sinai follows, and Torah becomes central to the Jewish understanding of election. Often compared to ancient Near Eastern suzerain-vassal treaties, the Sinaitic covenant entails obligations for each party. The Israelites are commanded to live by the teachings of Torah; God’s reciprocal blessing is both abstract and concrete, with commitments of love, favor, glory, fertility, health, and security (Exod. 23:25–6, Deut. 7:12–15, 26:16–19, 28:1–11). This theology permeates much of Torah, and many of the metaphors that evoke close relationship between God and Israel similarly entail mutual obligation—parent and child, husband and wife, shepherd and sheep, master and servant—although the people do not always hold up their end of the bargain.⁸ They are warned that violation will incur punishment, but the relationship abides (Lev. 26, Deut. 30:1–5, 1 Sam. 12:22, 2 Sam. 7:8–16, Ps. 105:7–10, Neh. 9).⁹ Both the covenant of divine friendship and the covenant of Torah remain vital in Tanakh. In the synthesis of love and commandment, chosenness is still an unearned gift, but intimacy breeds high expectations.

Although some critics have identified Jewish chosenness with racism because it is linked to a people rather than a faith, it does not fit the vast majority of biblical evidence. “One of the hardest points of biblical thought to understand is the concept of peoplehood, which is familial and natural without being racial and biologistic.”¹⁰ The textual portrait of the people of Israel has included since its exodus from Egypt a “mixed multitude” (Exod. 12:38), and individuals not born into the community continue to join it.¹¹ Deuteronomy 23:8–9 speaks about Edomites and Egyptians becoming part of the “assembly of the Lord,” a type of national legislature, in the third generation. It is perhaps most comparable to modern national identity, where residency eventually earns full citizenship even while ethnic origins remain a part of one’s identity.¹² Over time, the “chosen people” grew even more multiethnic and multinational.

Parts of Tanakh express concerns about intermarriage and treaties with resident Canaanites who might lead the community toward idolatry (Exod. 34:15–16), but a desire to preserve the integrity of one’s culture is not necessarily malevolent. Unfortunately the language of Ezra, when he rebukes the Jews for intermarrying and mixing “the holy seed” (9:1), introduces racist overtones.¹³ One can view his perspective as an outlier, and identify the book of Ruth (likely redacted around the same time) as a contemporaneous countervoice since its Moabite heroine becomes the ancestress of King David. Nonetheless, Ezra’s imagery provides a glancing biblical foundation for those who want to read into chosenness a genetic foundation.

The people of Israel is a “group,” and with every group, from teenage cliques to the rise of nations, there is a risk of developing exclusivist strains. Aware of this danger, the prophets teach in numerous ways that election does not provide exclusive title to divine concern. Amos proclaims God’s relationship with every nation: “Children of Israel, are you not just like the Ethiopians to Me, declares YHWH. Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, but also Philistines from Caphtor and Arameans from Kir” (9:7)? The prophet conventionally identified as Third Isaiah insists that foreigners who attach themselves to God and observe the covenant have equal status and equal claim to the spiritual inheritance; he presents the Temple as “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:3–8). The book of Jonah portrays a Hebrew prophet being sent to Nineveh, capital of the conquering Assyrian empire, to save them from God’s judgment; he struggles with the mission, but God tries to teach him about divine compassion for the whole of creation. Micah announces a pluralistic vision for God’s multitude of nations: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again train for war. Rather, every man shall sit under his grapevine or fig tree with no one to make him afraid. . . . For all the peoples walk each in the name of its gods; we will walk in the name of YHWH our God forever and ever” (Mic. 4:3–5).

The prophets also recognize the temptations of complacency, chauvinism, and parochialism that can accompany chosenness, and warn the people against them. Amos 3, in calling the nation to account for its failures, declares that chosenness entails additional liability rather than special privilege. Jeremiah, standing in the Temple gates, rails against invoking God’s presence in Jerusalem as if it is a divine talisman that protects the people even while they perpetrate injustice (7:3–11). The nation is reminded time and again that its election entails living in faithfulness with the covenant, including manifest concern for the widow, orphan, and stranger. Jeremy Cott called the theology of the stranger an “anti-election” theology.¹⁴ It might better be construed as the necessary corollary of election, a rule for how to conceive of and engage the other to prevent marginalization and abuse.

After the Temple is destroyed, the prophets focus more on reassuring a devastated people that God’s special love for them abides (e.g., Jer. 31, Isa. 43:1–4, 44:1–5). Second Isaiah helps the exiles find purpose in their suffering and claims they can become a light unto the nations (ch. 42). Yet chosenness carries risk for the chosen, a dynamic highlighted in Tanakh’s “Diaspora literature.” The book of Esther, composed in exile, provides a literary demonstration of how easy it is to demonize difference; Haman persuades King Ahasuerus to order the annihilation of the Jews by claiming that their unique practices prove they do not obey the king’s laws (Esther 3:8).¹⁵ Second Isaiah, portraying Israel as the suffering servant (e.g., 52:3–53:12), laments how God’s elect suffer for their faithfulness. Indeed, Jewish adherence to the covenant has frequently been villainized, prompting oppressive legislation and violence.

Today, we are far more conscious of the dangers that election poses for those outside the covenanted group, including suppression and conquest. These are evident in Deuteronomy 7. After establishing that God’s choice of Israel is not based on size or might but rather fulfillment of a promise to the patriarchs, the nation is asked to show comparable loyalty to God by refusing to intermarry with the Canaanites and by excising every remnant of pagan worship in the land: “Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred posts, and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a people holy to YHWH your God: YHWH your God chose you to be His treasured people from among all the peoples on the face of the earth” (7:5–6). Never mind that the purge is never executed. Living today in a pluralistic society, we see it as xenophobia and religious persecution—even though our own age is also poisoned by Islamophobia, religious hate crimes, and destruction of other people’s sacred sites.

Some rabbinic texts and contemporary scholars understand the biblical text to authorize war only as a divine prerogative, forbidden unless God specifically commands it.¹⁶ Yet Torah sanctions violence to advance the cause of the elect. Instructions for conquest include slaughtering every Canaanite in the heart of the land (Deut. 20:16) along with more “generous” terms for outlying areas. There, the Israelites are commanded first to sue for peace and to attack only if they are refused, at which point they are told to kill all the men and take the women, children, and property as spoils of war (vv. 10–14). Although biblical and archaeological evidence indicates that this brutal vision was not implemented and Canaanite presence continued in the land, Tanakh fails to grapple with the moral implications of its charge.¹⁷ References to the iniquity of the Canaanites (Gen. 15:16, Deut. 9:4–6, Lev. 18:24, 20:23) are designed primarily as a cautionary tale for Israel not to repeat their errors. To the extent that they also serve as justification for the extirpation of the Canaanites, they merely compound the ethical dilemma—as if sin can earn such a fate.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the biblical account dooms the Canaanites because their iniquity has angered God, not because they are “not chosen.”¹⁸ Although God takes the side of the Israelites in fulfillment of the promises of election, the world is not divided among the elect and the damned. Joel Kaminsky has suggested we recognize three categories in Tanakh: the elect, the non-elect, and the anti-elect. Only the last of these (Canaanites and Amalekites) are condemned.¹⁹ The non-elect, like Ishmael, have key roles in the divine economy—and all stand in relationship with God.

The conquest tradition is not as central in Tanakh as some critics suggest; one can also derive a strong peace tradition from the text.²⁰ But the promise of a homeland is linked to election tracing back to Abraham, so it cannot be completely marginalized either. Our reading must be grounded in the historical context of the Deuteronomistic redaction: during the Israelite monarchy of the eighth to seventh century BCE, gods regularly took sides and proscription of enemy populations was common practice. Intense exposure to cosmopolitan Assyrian culture—impacting Israelite art, economy, and religious life—likely prompted fervent opposition in an effort to stem the tide of cultural assimilation.²¹ Bearing these facts in mind neither eliminates the dangerous linkage of conquest and election nor definitively conscribes its influence, but we can learn to recognize the volatile mix of self-preservation, rationalization, and religion that justifies aggression.

Ultimately, Tanakh presents the story of one family-cum-nation, called to stand in special relationship with its God, Creator of the universe and Redeemer of all humanity. Jewish tradition grapples with its complex understandings of chosenness—both the dangers and the possibilities.

CIRCUMSCRIBING CONQUEST AND NAVIGATING DIFFERENCE

While some early rabbis supported military resistance against the Roman Empire, rabbinic texts from the classical period were redacted during a time of political powerlessness. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the decimation of diaspora communities in 115–117, and the brutal crushing of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135, the futility of fighting the Roman Empire by force of arms was clear. Rabbinic literature developed ideas that mark a different course, including:

   The catastrophes of the first and second centuries fell upon the Jews as a consequence of their sins; the path to restoration is through repentance and renewed commitment to religious observance.

   God will at the proper time lead the people home and punish the nations who oppressed Israel.

   War is associated with human wickedness, and peace is valorized.

   The warrior is transformed into a heroic master of Torah and its interpretation, trained in intellectual combat and spiritual virtuosity. Torah is the glory of Israel.²²

Although the sages provided prooftexts for their teachings and saw them as an authentic development of biblical religion, they overlaid their own values to privilege what they saw as overarching scriptural principles.²³ Rabbinic culture was sensitized to imperial oppression and valued nonviolence in fashioning a politics of exile. Conquest began to be uncoupled from chosenness.

These ideas are well-attested, but the literature spans such a broad reach of time and space—with great historical shifts and a multitude of voices—that it is problematic to deal in generalizations. Rabbinic texts do not present a uniformly pacifist ethos, and the sages imagined a time of restoration in which Jews would again hold political power. Focusing on rabbinic strategies that circumscribe biblical instructions about conquest, one move of great significance is the division of war into two categories, commanded and discretionary. “Joshua’s wars of conquest everyone agrees are obligatory,” one passage asserts, “while the wars of the House of David for territorial expansion everyone agrees are discretionary” (b. Sotah 44b; see also y. Sotah 8:1). The discussion leaves open whether later conquest of the land could ever be considered a commanded war, but halakhah isolates the Deuteronomic directive for conquest—not applicable to the general conduct of war.²⁴

The rabbis also attempted to constrain some of the most pernicious instructions related to the Canaanites. They insisted that the emperor Sennacherib mixed up all the peoples when the Assyrians conquered territory and exiled residents from their lands, so there are no longer any nations to which the proscription applies (m. Yad. 4:4, b. Ber. 28a, b. Yoma 54a). In addition, they asserted that the Canaanites of history were spared if they abandoned their immoral practices (Sifre Deut. 202, t. Sotah 8:7, b. Sotah 35b), and terms of peace were offered in every instance (Lev. Rab. 17:6, y. Shev 6:1 (36c); Deut Rab. 5:13–14).²⁵ Using their standard hermeneutics of close reading and creative exegesis, the sages established a foundation to contain the teaching of conquest.

Chosenness became much more tied to difference. As an often-beleaguered religious minority from late antiquity into the modern era, Jews both embody the other and have constructed non-Jews as “other” in their literature and religious imagination. Demonstrating the abiding chosenness of the Jews became a strategy for survival. Often more concerned about elevating the chosen than denigrating others, various texts convey images of ethical, intellectual, or spiritual superiority. For example, one repeated trope presents arguments that end with the rabbinic sages persuading their non-Jewish interlocutors of the wisdom of Torah, the God who gave it, and the rabbinic tradition that interprets it. Jews had been without political autonomy or Temple for centuries by the time these texts were redacted, but they imagined victory for the chosen through a contest of wisdom.²⁶

In the ongoing construction of self and other, polemical texts tried to discredit supersessionary claims in order to sustain Jewish faith in the face of physical, economic, political, and spiritual pressure to convert. A midrash on Song of Songs, for example, presents a parable in which the straw, chaff, and stubble each claim that the land was sown for its sake. The wheat tells them to await harvest, and they will learn the truth. Chaff is scattered to the wind, the straw cast on the floor, the stubble burned, and the wheat is gathered into stacks where everyone kisses it. So it is, according to the midrash, with the nations of the world: each claims to be Israel, but it will become clear at the end of days that the Jews still hold this mantle and the world was created for their sake (Song Rab. 7:3(3)).²⁷

Typical of Jewish literature’s multivocality, texts cite various tradents with diverse ideas about non-Jews, seemingly dependent on personal temperament, experience, and historical context. The examples here, drawn from the Babylonian Talmud and Tannaitic traditions that fed into it, should be considered illustrative rather than a comprehensive presentation of what the Talmud “says.” Also, attributions are not necessarily reliable, so it is more appropriate to identify literary portraits instead of historical figures, but it is fair to assume that they approximate the range of opinion that existed within the community.²⁸ Rabbi Eliezer b. Hyrcanus, for instance, reportedly rejected the idea that righteous Gentiles have a share in the world to come, but Rabbi Joshua affirmed it (t. Sanh. 13:2, b. Sanh. 105a). The sages endorsed Rabbi Joshua’s opinion.²⁹

A mishnaic passage maintained that idolaters lack basic moral standards: “Do not lodge cattle at the inns of idolaters because they are suspected of bestiality. A woman should not be alone with them because they are suspected of sexual immorality. A man should not be alone with them because they are suspected of shedding blood” (m. Sanh. 2:1). While it did not speak of chosenness, the passage implied that the covenanted community is more trustworthy. Yet Jewish texts also discerned a universal standard of righteousness that obtained among Gentiles, traceable to God’s covenant with Noah. It is found as early as the book of Jubilees (7:20), then developed more fully within Talmud as a set of seven Noahide laws.³⁰ Non-Jews who abided by a comparable moral code were entitled to protection and aid as “strangers” (b. Avod. Zar. 64b). The community was also instructed to support their poor, visit their sick, and bury their deceased “for the sake of peace” (b. Git. 61a).

Hostility toward non-Jews sometimes appeared in the liturgy. There was a line within the Aleinu prayer claiming that other peoples bow down to emptiness and pray to a god who will not save. It was occasionally self-censored, then officially censored by Catholic authorities. In the Amidah sequence of prayers, repeated three times a day in traditional rabbinic practice, there was a malediction. Its earliest extant versions (c. ninth century) expressed enmity toward Karaites, Christians, and others, calling on God to destroy the insolent.³¹ It stood in contrast to the blessing that followed it, seeking mercy for the righteous, the household of Israel.

Expressions of antipathy were most often bound up with the people’s historical experience of suffering, and thus became more widespread in the medieval period. In Jewish chronicles penned in the wake of the Crusades, for example, the chosen ones were repeatedly contrasted with the venomous attackers, urged on by a satanic Pope to “come to the tomb of the crucified one, a rotting corpse that cannot avail and cannot save.”³² Yet the suffering also stood as a sign of special intimacy. In the idiom of Jewish poetry from Askhenaz, the beloved son is wed to his bride (God) in holy sacrifice: “Young men went forth, each from his room/ to sanctify the Great Name, for today He tests His chosen ones.”³³ After the Jews of Blois were massacred in response to a blood libel in 1171, Rabbi Hillel b. Jacob wrote,

And when it was said, “Bring them out to the fire,”

They rejoiced together as a bride at the bridal canopy

“It is for us to praise,” they recited, their souls filled with longing.

“It is for us to praise” is the beginning of the Aleinu prayer, which emphasizes the unique destiny of the Jewish people in their singular commitment to worship God.³⁴

While Christian texts highlighted the suffering of the Jews as evidence of divine condemnation, Jewish texts interpreted it as evidence of God’s special concern. Martyrdom’s prominence in evincing the role of the chosen, however, did not lessen the sense of incredulity at their fate. Shlomo bar Shimshon wrote after the First Crusade, “Why have you abandoned your nation, Israel, to derision, contempt, and humiliation, to be consumed by nations impure as swine—this very people whom You chose to be the elect of all the nations?”³⁵

Co-construction of self and other is also evident in the polemical medieval literature called Toledot Yeshu (The Life Story of Jesus), containing parodies of Jesus’s life and death. These works portrayed Yeshu as the bastard son of an adulteress, deriding ideas of the virgin birth, incarnation, and ascension. His reputed miracles were reduced to magic tricks and illicit use of the divine name, with Judas as the hero of the tale.³⁶ David Biale argued that this was not simply a biting satire, but effectively a counterhistory, a literature of protest that transvalued the Christian narrative. For example, it cast Paul and Simon Peter as infiltrators sent by the rabbis; in order to prevent Judaism from being corrupted, they persuaded Jesus’s followers to divorce themselves from it. “The strategy of the text is to reverse the sense of Jewish powerlessness in the face of Christian enmity by arguing that the Jews really control Christian history after all.”³⁷ Such polemic did not constitute the meaning of chosenness, but it reinforced the distinction between the elect community and the world outside, and contested the idea that God’s chosen people may have been cast aside.

Medieval polemical literature also reflected older tropes that implicitly invoked chosenness by praising the morality, piety, and education of the Jews—with some interesting additions. In Joseph Kimchi’s Sefer haBerit (The Book of the Covenant, twelfth-century Spain/Provence), he criticized Christians for failing to “observe the law of Grace” and for violence amongst themselves. He accused them of bowing down to images, encouraging immodesty among women, swindling travelers, working on holy days—and in each instance, the Jews represented the righteous foil for their behavior. He belittled Christianity for being a noncritical faith, putting into the mouth of the Christian interlocutor, “Whoever wishes to have faith should not scrutinize the words of Jesus.” In response, the Jewish character challenged, “Why do you not subject your belief to reason in an honest manner? [Scripture] speaks to a mature man, one who knows how to scrutinize his faith so that he does not err.”³⁸ Such a statement is wonderful for its embrace of self-critical faith, but simultaneously troubling for its portrait of the “other.” In the fourteenth century, Simon b. Tzemach Duran authored Keshet uMagen (Bow and Shield), with arguments against both Christianity and Islam. Rather than portray Jesus in a negative light, he offered a Jewish version of his life and death, insisting that his followers perverted his intent; it was another effort at counterhistory. Over against Islam, he disparaged the hajj as pagan, contested Muhammad’s status as a prophet, and refuted Muslim charges against Judaism involving textual distortion and abrogation. Qur’an, he stated, is full of confusion—a weak imitation of Torah.³⁹ Each of his critiques served to strengthen Jewish faith and identity.

The Middle Ages also produced a small but potentially poisonous strain of thought that saw election effected through biological difference between Jews and Gentiles. Yehuda haLevi (1075–1141, Spain) believed that only those born Jewish can achieve prophecy; they are a “different level of species of creation, a species angelic in nature”—the chosen of all humanity.⁴⁰ The Zohar, a mystical midrash, took the notion of genetic difference to a frightening extreme: Israel alone is imbued with the divine image; the spirit that dwells among the nations derives from sitra achra (literally “the other side”), the side of impurity or the cosmic demonic (1:20b (122)).

There were important countervoices. The prominent rabbinic leader, Saadia Gaon (c. 882–942, Egypt and Baghdad), warned the people not to misconstrue the idea of Israel as God’s special possession; all nations belong to God and Israel’s election does not imply exclusion of others.⁴¹ Saadia’s concerns were likely philosophical rather than rooted in love for neighbor; he was resistant to any limitations placed on the infinite God. Yet some medieval sages advocated a greater sense of mutuality with non-Jews. Menachem Meiri (1249–c. 1315, Provence), for example, rejected Talmudic laws that discriminated between Jews and non-Jews, arguing that the religions of his day were not to be categorized with pagan practices of antiquity. He taught that all people who sincerely profess an ethical religion are part of a greater spiritual Israel.⁴²

One often finds ambivalence within the tradition, even within the thought of a single author. Moses Maimonides specifically rejected the idea that chosenness is biologically determined. He insisted that Jews become a nation of priests only through knowledge of God; obedience to Torah leads to virtue.⁴³ He also believed that Muslims and Christians play a significant role in God’s redemptive plan, preparing “the whole world to worship God with one accord.” Yet in the same text, he lamented the enormous harm wrought by Christianity: “Can there be a greater stumbling block than Christianity? All the prophets spoke of the Messiah as the redeemer of Israel and their savior who would gather their dispersed and strengthen their observance of the commandments. In contrast, Christianity causes Jews to be slain by the sword, their remnants to be scattered and dishonored, the Torah to be altered, and the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than YHWH.”⁴⁴

Maimonides exhibited conflicting responses to his Muslim milieu as well. On one hand, he was heavily influenced by Islamic theology, philosophy, and science. On the other, he was motivated by the forced conversion of Yemenite Jews to Islam to engage in polemic, saying Islam was invented by a madman.⁴⁵ Bewailing severe oppression and rebutting teachings used to attract Jews, he emphasized the preeminence of Judaism: “Remember that ours is the true and authentic Divine religion, revealed to us through Moses. . . . As Scripture says, Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them and He chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples” (Deut. 10:15).⁴⁶

VIRTUES OF CHOSENNESS: A PLACE FOR PARTICULARITY, GOD’S ABIDING LOVE, A LIFE OF TORAH

From this complex and multivocal tradition, Judaism emphasizes three themes that communicate the continuing appeal and positive value of chosenness. It creates space for particularity, affirms God’s abiding love, and inspires commitment to Torah. The first of these has historically been more controversial than it sounds. Reviewing the history of the concept, Walter Brueggemann concluded, “Indeed, one can make the case that the long, brutal history of anti-Semitism in Western culture is the venomous attempt to eradicate that claim of particularity upon which the Bible stands or falls.”⁴⁷ According to Jonathan Sacks, Western culture has staged a continuous assault on particularism that can be traced back to Plato, with his world of forms where what is real and true must be universal and timeless.⁴⁸ It became more insidious once Kant explicitly tied the universal principle to morality as well; these two giants of Western philosophical tradition helped to shape Enlightenment notions that goodness, ethics, and truth must be universal. Kant also argued that Christianity “from the beginning bore within it the germ and the principle of the objective unity of the true and universal religious faith.”⁴⁹ Consequently, modernity’s history of religions was tendentiously scripted as a hierarchical progression from tribal to national to universal—leading many scholars and religious leaders to denigrate Judaism for its particular concern with the story of the Jewish people.⁵⁰

Christianity and Islam were exalted for their universal aspirations even though, from a Jewish perspective, a desire to convert the world seems imperialistic. Sacks has described Tanakh as an anti-Platonic work. Moving from the universal to the particular, it begins with creation of the world and stories of humanity; these culminate in the Tower of Babel, where a unified purpose leads only to totalitarian pursuit of power. So God creates difference. Jewish particularity, bolstered by claims of chosenness, can defend the dignity of difference for all.⁵¹

Particularism is neither exclusivism nor parochialism. Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), an early voice of Jewish modernity, noted that the revelation on Sinai did not proclaim a universal philosophical truth. Instead, “I am YHWH your God who took you out of Egypt” (Exod. 20:2) evokes a particular relationship. “Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation.”⁵² All peoples can discern such things in their own way. Torah merely conveys the story of one people with its God and how they endeavor to live into that relationship.

Jewish voices have largely echoed the approach of Tanakh, affirming both God’s universal concern and a distinct role for the Jewish people. Philo put Judaism in conversation with Hellenistic philosophy, identifying as “Israel” all those who pursue knowledge of God through a philosophical quest. He maintained that Torah accorded with the best teachings of righteousness among the nations, yet it was also a particular expression as revealed to and embodied by the Jewish people.⁵³ Philo believed Jews had special merit, consecrated above the nations to serve as their “priests” (Exod. 19)—a chauvinistic view, but one that sought universal benefit to Israel’s election.⁵⁴

Modern expressions frequently emphasized the idea of chosenness as a mission to help the world. Kaufmann Kohler thought Judaism should “be the bearer of the most lofty truths of religion among mankind.”⁵⁵ Leo Baeck (1873–1956) and other neo-Kantian Jewish thinkers focused on election as responsibility toward others, lived out through the people’s experience of revelation: “The idea of election has as its unconditional correlation the idea of humanity.”⁵⁶ While these claims risk presenting one’s own people as an ethical or spiritual vanguard, they emphasize the crucial mutuality of blessing tracing back to Abraham.

Still, critics of Jewish particularism linked it negatively to the idea of chosenness. Ernest Jones, a Welsh psychologist, wrote in 1945, “Everything points to the fact that the basic lesson for the non-assimilation of the Jews is to be found in the peculiarly exclusive and arrogant nature of their religious beliefs, including that of having a special relationship with the divinity.”⁵⁷ While such arguments are frequently a cover for antisemitism, they have been deeply woven into the cultural fabric of the West. It is only in the postmodern era that there has been broader appreciation for the value of difference, with its manifold particularisms. In turn, there is room for Jewish conceptions of chosenness that affirm the unique but not exclusive dimensions of Israel’s relationship with God. Numerous Jewish and Christian scholars since the 1990s have written new analyses that preserve Jewish particularity within a pluralist, egalitarian perspective. Irving Greenberg, a modern orthodox rabbi, provides one example: “The chosen-people concept expresses the Jews’ experience of being singled out by God’s love. . . . If one has truly tasted the experience, one would be reluctant to lose that feeling by dissolving back into the mass. . . . Nor is the process reserved for us to the exclusion of everyone else. God’s love—God’s redemptive love—which is the basis of chosenness, is never the monopoly of any one people. . . . That cannot take away my unique experience or my feeling of uniqueness.”⁵⁸

The experience of God’s abiding love is so central that it comprises a distinct focus of chosenness throughout Jewish tradition. Talmudic expressions abound: one passage proclaimed that Israel is so beloved, the Holy One went into exile with them (b. Meg. 29a).⁵⁹ Another professed, “You have made Me the unique object of your love in the world, and I make you the unique object of My love in the world” (b. Hag. 3a–b), bringing 1 Chronicles 17:21 as evidence: “Who is like Your people Israel, a nation unique on the earth?” The next verse continues: “You have established Your people Israel as Your very own forever, and You, YHWH, have become their God.” As exile stretched into centuries and critics alleged that the Jews’ suffering was a sign of God’s rejection, rabbinic texts stressed the eternal nature of Israel’s status regardless of appearances. Many Jews came to see their distinctive fate as evidence of God’s election, both in their adversity and in their remarkable survival. The suffering of the nation was sometimes interpreted as punishment for transgression or chastisements of love, but it did not represent a permanent rupture in the relationship with God. “Even though the people sinned, they are still called Israel” (b. Sanh. 44a).⁶⁰ Historical trauma heightened the importance of chosenness within Jewish imagination, but God’s love had always felt essential to the people’s existence. The prophet Hosea understood it as the shield against utter destruction: “I fell in love with Israel when he was still a child. . . . How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? . . . I have had a change of heart, all My tenderness is stirred” (Hosea 11:1, 8).

While this intensity of God’s love is experienced as singular, the tradition affirms God’s enduring affection for Israel alongside God’s universal concern. Often they are viewed as interdependent. Commenting on the verse, “A land which YHWH your God looks after” (Deut. 11:12), an early rabbinic text asked: Does not God care for all the lands? The answer is that the special concern God has for the land of Israel is the catalyst of divine concern for all lands,⁶¹ as God’s special love for the people of Israel serves as the foundation of God’s love for all of humanity (Sifre Deut. 40). Ethnocentric but not exclusive, the notion is echoed by R. Kendall Soulen, a contemporary Christian theologian: “The unsubstitutability of God’s love for Israel is the guarantee of God’s love toward all persons, elect and non-elect. The distinction between Jew and Gentile—far from indicating a limit or imperfection of God’s love—testifies to God’s willingness to engage all creation on the basis of divine passion.”⁶²

It is Torah study and praxis, however, that comprise the primary ground of election. Spread throughout rabbinic literature are teachings such as these: Why did the Blessed Holy One choose them? Because all the nations rejected Torah and refused to accept it, but Israel gladly chose the Blessed Holy One and His Torah” (Num. Rab. 14:10). “You captured My heart with one of your eyes” (Song 4:9), when you stood before Me at Mount Sinai and said, “All that YHWH has said, we will do and we will hearken” (Exod. 24:7, Song Rab. 4:21). It is not expected that the translation to human action will be perfect; atonement is built into the system and Yom Kippur is on the calendar every year. God’s gracious initiative of love, however, can inspire the nation to become worthy through its living out and living into the divine instruction.

Jewish liturgy is explicit in linking Torah and chosenness. In one blessing, God’s love is demonstrated through the revelation of Torah and commandments to the people; its conclusion states simply, “Blessed are You Adonai, who has chosen His people Israel in love.” Another, recited before the public recitation of scripture, praises God for choosing the Jewish people by giving them Torah. Jewish embodiment of Torah’s teachings is what makes the Jews special.

Torah is not perceived merely as an obligation, but also as a life-sustaining gift, a notion beautifully expressed in a parable that portrays Israel as a queen whose husband (i.e., God) has gone away to a distant land. The king’s extended absence causes the neighbor-ladies (i.e., the other nations) to torment the queen by insisting that he is never coming back. Although sometimes driven to despair, she seeks comfort by reading her marriage contract (i.e., Torah). When the king eventually returns and expresses wonder that she had waited, she tells him about the power of the marriage contract to sustain her. Similarly, when the Jews read from the Torah, they are reassured by God’s promise to make them fruitful, to maintain the covenant, to always walk among them. When redemption dawns, God will be amazed that they remained faithful and they will reply, “Master of the Universe, were it not for Your Torah which You gave to us, the nations would have annihilated us long ago” (Lam. Rab. 3).⁶³

The sages believed that Torah study and observance were not only for the sake of Israel. They taught that Jews’ embrace of Torah “made peace between God and the world,” and is essential to the divine plan for creation (Song Rab. 7:1, Ruth Rab. Prol. 1). In the creation myth of sixteenth-century Lurianic kabbalah, every fulfillment of a mitzvah redeems a divine spark, helping to repair our fractured world—providing sacred purpose to minute acts of daily life.⁶⁴ As with the first call of Abraham, Israel’s election is bound up with blessing for all the peoples of the earth, demonstrating both ethnocentricity and universal concern.

The sages also taught that Torah was given in the wilderness so that none could lay exclusive claim, and it was revealed in seventy languages so all could understand (Mek. Baḥodesh 1). Midrashim that tell how God shopped the Torah to other nations first, but gave it to Israel because they said yes, reveal how Israel chose God as much as God chose Israel (Mek. Baḥodesh 5, Sifre Deut. 343). Such an interpretation is simultaneously humble in claiming no intrinsic merit for the nation, and partisan in asserting they were the only ones willing to accept the obligations. Trying to be clever with intertextual associations, the authors unfortunately disparage other nations in supplying the reasons they refused. Again, construction of self is bound up with our conception of others, and no interpretation of chosenness is immune to the dangers of evaluating difference. Yet a different text imagines that Israel said yes only because God held Mt. Sinai over their heads, threatening to drop it on them if they refused (b. Avod. Zar. 2b). And another explains that God will surely be angrier at the one who accepts and does not follow through (Exod. Rab. 27:9), maintaining the posture of prophetic critique that spurs continual self-reflection and improvement.

Though not immune to bias and abuse, these memes of chosenness—a place for particularity, reassurance of God’s abiding love, and a life of Torah—copy well throughout the history of Judaism. They provide meaning and pleasure, they help define a community, they shape some of Jewish civilization’s founding values, and they conform to the multiple adaptations in our brain that sustain religious faith and practice.