Beyond Vocation: Reclaiming the Language of Chosenness
December 1, 2025
To ensure a passionate and distinctive Jewish future, we should reclaim our foundational metaphor of “chosenness.”
Rabbi Armin Langer, Ph.D., serves as the rabbi of Congregation Shir Hadash in Milwaukee. He previously worked as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Center for European Studies. He also held visiting fellowships at Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and at the University of Virginia’s Center for German Studies.
Langer received his rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He has taught and led services in Jewish communities across the United States, Mexico, Sweden, Germany, Austria and Hungary. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Humboldt University of Berlin, and pursued studies in philosophy and Jewish studies in Budapest, Jerusalem, Potsdam and Washington, D.C.
His writing on Jewish thought, migration, race and ethnicity, and nationalism has appeared in academic journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies and the Journal of Jewish Ethics, as well as in popular publications such as The Forward and The Conversation. Personal website: arminlanger.net
To ensure a passionate and distinctive Jewish future, we should reclaim our foundational metaphor of “chosenness.”
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Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement
Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis
Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues
Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives
