Dr. John Young                                                                                                                            4/1/07

Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville

Chosen for What?

The Jewish people have often identified themselves as the Chosen People. In preparation for our annual Passover Seder, it seems appropriate to consider what the Jews have meant by calling themselves the chosen people, and what some of the consequences may be for any group or individual that considers that they are especially chosen.

          The Jew’s perception to be the chosen people was built upon the passage in the 2^nd book of the Torah, or the 2^nd book of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, Exodus: 19:5-6 that states: “If you obey God’s voice and keep my covenant then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people. You shall be a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” The obligation this imposed upon the Jews was emphasized by the prophet Amos 3:2: “You only have I singled out of all the families of earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.”

The facts of Jewish history certainly shaped Jew’s understanding of their being The Chosen People.  The Jews began as wandering tribes who finally got together enough to conquer others and seize a land of their own. They had an expanding kingdom for only a few generations, and spent centuries thereafter being subjugated by other people [Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Christians, and Muslims] in their chosen land or in exile. For nearly two thousand years, the vast majority of Jews were a minority Diaspora spread across the world. Only since WWII, have the Jews again had political control of their chosen land. Nevertheless, today, the largest Jewish population lives in the United States, and most Jews still live as integrated minorities in other nations besides Israel. It is hard for Jews or non-Jews to look at Jewish history and say that being chosen has made it easy to be a Jew. Jewish history with its long periods of being divided and divisive, conquered and oppressed, marginalized and shunned, climaxed by the Nazi’s systematic attempt to eliminate all Jews make it almost incomprehensible that any people would agree to be chosen, as Jews have been chosen throughout their history.

This being April Fool’s Day on America’s calendar, let me share with you a summary from the satirical blog, Wire, that illustrates this point: “The 10,000 year term of being God’s chosen people expired last night, [PAUSE]  but no people volunteered. In fact, many groups actively expressed no interest. ‘Are you kidding, short periods of prosperity, interrupted by centuries of insufferable chaos?’ ‘We’d like to help, but we already have too many obligations.’ There was one late application on behalf of Islam, but it was filled out in Hebrew, and the Imams argued clearly that it was a fake. A leading rabbi tried to convince the Imams: ‘After a few diasporas, you have would have gotten used to the universal hatred thing.’ A good many Americans expressed outrage because they had assumed that they already were God’s chosen people. However, a European Archbishop explained that ‘it only seems that way because so many people don’t like Americans.’ So, given the lack of other candidates, God ended up choosing the Jews again through a blind drawing. In Jerusalem, Jewish leaders then said that they will propose an amendment to God’s law prohibiting a people from having to serve more than two consecutive terms as The Chosen People.”

The most convincing argument of what it means for the Jews to be the Chosen People is summarized by Joseph Telushkin in Jewish Literacy. “The meaning of chosenness is to make God known to the world. Chosenness is unconnected with race because Jews believe that the Messiah will descend from the Biblical Ruth, a non-Jewish woman who converted to Judaism. In Deuteronomy 7:7: it explicitly says that the Jews were chosen because they are the ‘smallest population of all peoples.’ Thus, if they made God known to the world, it would not be because of their vast population or their mighty armies but because of the truth of their ideas, simply because of the power of God.”

Let me amplify this perspective by sharing a brief summary of contemporary Jewish ideas about their chosenness. A British orthodox rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits says: “every people, even every individual is chosen or destined for some distinct purpose in advancing the designs of Providence. Only some fulfill their mission and others do not. The Jews were chosen to be pioneers of religion and morality; that was and is their national purpose.” American Orthodox Rabbi Norman Lamm argues that chosenness has: “two complementary functions: a holy nation, developing a communal separateness in order to achieve a collective self-transcendence, and a kingdom of priests, spiritual elite that teach other peoples.”

 American Conservative Jews believe that chosenness “does not imply any innate Jewish superiority. Far from being a license for special privileges, it entails additional responsibilities not only toward God but with our fellow human beings. Because of Jew’s special history, we are in a position to demonstrate that those with a covenant with God can thrive in the face of oppression, and can be a blessing to their children and to their neighbors. Chosenness obligates us to build a just and compassionate society throughout the world and especially in the land of Israel where we may teach by example what it means to be a covenant people, a light unto the nations.” The Masorti Jews, the Conservative Jews in Israel, argue: “There is no inherent superiority in being Jewish, but we do assert the superiority of monotheistic belief over paganism. We are thankful that God has enlightened us so that we worship the true God.”

Reform Jews see chosenness to be: “witnessing to God in the face of every form of paganism and materialism. We are a people aspiring to holiness, linked by our covenant with God and our history to all Jews throughout the world and history. We regard it as our historic task to cooperate with all people in the establishment of the kingdom of God, and to nurture universal humanity, justice, truth, and peace on earth.” Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, rejected the concept of chosenness. He argued that it leads to racist beliefs among Jews. Contemporary Reconstructionists have proceeded to argue that chosenness is morally untenable, unethical, that all people are equally loved by God, and that “chosenness falsely leads to valuing one people over and above others.”

I think that identifying one’s people as chosen is a dangerous concept. George Bernard Shaw said that if the Nazis had realized that their Aryan doctrine was simply another version of the Jewish concept as The Chosen People that they would have dropped it instantly. Unfortunately, this sort of doctrine has and does often lead to a sense of superiority. Unfortunately, the more marginalized and oppressed the Jews became, some of them pressed their Chosenness to the limit as in the Kabbalah book of Zohar, which argued that “only Jews have living souls and that other peoples were simply empty shells.” Unfortunately, millions of Christians and Muslims have taken on this sense of being the only saved people. In Christianity, it is called supersessionism: the belief that Christian believers have replaced the physical Israelites as God’s chosen people, and they point to Galatians 3:29: “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Not all Christians are supersessionists, and not all Muslims believe that Islam is exclusive to them. Those that do simply argue that Abraham was actually Islamic and that Jews and Christians had the scriptures but misinterpreted and misused them, and need the Koran and Islam in order to gain the truth.

Ethnocentrism of every sort has tended to justify cultural imperialism, racism, and xenophobia. This has been as true in the United States as any where else. Many American slave-owners argued that they were chosen by God for their role as slaveholders, and many of the frontier men saw the destruction or conversion of the Native Americans as their sacred duty. Mormons count themselves among the tribes of Israel and argue that the Jews will ultimately accept Christianity. Some Americans today seem to believe that significant groups of people can be morally eliminated to protect our security, that the whole world must become practitioners of American Christianity, capitalism, and democracy or disappear. Wire’s satirists’ perspective that many Americans already think that they are God’s Chosen People is uncomfortably close to reality.

However, I think that if chosenness can be understood and lived primarily as a responsibility then it could, indeed, become a spiritual and human virtue. If chosenness could become a humbling way of taking on tasks larger than your own selfish interests and beyond your tribe’s power base then it may yet become a way for human beings to Passover beyond materialism and short-sightedness. If chosenness could become a spiritual practice and a life goal that stretches us into altruism and self-sacrifice for the greater good, the human future, and on behalf of sustaining the good earth then being chosen might not drop us into the pit of despair but instead lift us up toward the kin-dom of God that Jews have appropriately been trying to bring to earth for many centuries.

If the Jews are again to be a light to the world, Israel must stop its imperial oppression of the Palestinians. There has been much violence on both sides, and I have no respect for terrorists or criminals. Its Islamic neighbors have not done what they should for the Palestinians or with Israel. But this is an issue where the Jewish government in Israel and the Jews and their allies in America and throughout the world must take the initiative. Give the Palestinians a land that is large enough and enough financial and political support to make their nation-building a tenable process. America can do this whenever we get the courage, and Israel will respond because millions of Israelis know that that they need to do justice and that it is the only foundation for their own viable future. However, the practitioners of ethnocentric and religious-centric chosenness will stand in the way at every turn because they expect, and some actively seek and promote, a world-ending cataclysm.

Like the Jews, we Unitarian Universalists are a small people, statistically insignificant but potentially spiritually mighty. Our Unitarian and Universalist spiritual ancestors have already accomplished amazing progress in the human journey, out of all proportion to their numbers, wealth, or power, simply because of the strength of their ideas, the power of their imaginations, and the courage and persistence of their ethical and moral actions.

As far as I am concerned, the Orthodox Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits is correct. Every people do have a legitimate mission in the scheme of things, or, for the mystics among us like myself, have unique purposes in the designs of Providence. Every individual also is here in their lives to fulfill worthy and relatively selfless purposes for the greater good or, for us believers; each individual has unique work in the nurturing of the kin-dom of God on Earth. Some of us do these sacred jobs badly and some of us do them well. I think that makes all the difference in a human life. If we fail to do what we truly can to do to nurture love, to build justice, and to sustain Creation then we have failed in our lives. So, take courage, be patient, and live with love. For you are chosen! And from you much is expected!