I came to Reconstructionist Judaism through its intellectual honesty. Like so many, I found a home in a movement that saw our tradition not as a static monument but as a living, evolving religious civilization. Central to this was Mordecai Kaplan’s theology. His rational, peoplehood-oriented, democratic approach to Judaism has long inspired me. Yet there has always been one point where I hesitate: Kaplan’s rejection of the metaphor of “chosenness.” Reconstructionism has reimagined so many elements of theology and practice — from the concept of God as a naturalistic process, through Torah as the record of Jewish civilizational growth, to halakhah as folkway and beyond — why, then, should “chosenness” be the one idea left unreconstructed?
Kaplan saw “chosenness” as an alarming growth of supernaturalism, an idea that had fueled Jewish chauvinism. In its place, he offered the concept of “vocation.” The Jews, he argued, were not a supernaturally “chosen” people but a people with a unique “vocation” for ethical monotheism and tikkun olam. But I have come to believe that Kaplan’s “vocation,” while an apt adjustment for its time, traded our powerful, particularist language for a derivative, universalist concept. To ensure a passionate and distinctive Jewish future, we should reclaim our foundational metaphor of “chosenness.”
The language of “chosenness” has been twisted internally by some Jews to promote a chauvinistic sense of superiority over non-Jews. This very misuse is why our recovery of the metaphor must be careful and ethical.
Protestant echo in Kaplan’s ‘vocation’?
In truth, Kaplan’s notion of “vocation” may not be as far from “chosenness” as he imagined. To say that the Jewish people have a unique task of ethical monotheism and tikkun olam is already to suggest a unique role within humanity — a form of “chosenness” by another name. Kaplan may have changed the vocabulary by introducing a rational, universally accepted, ethical term, but not the structure of the idea.
If Kaplan’s “vocation” was an act of translation, we should ask into what language it was translated. The idiom was Protestant — the term “vocation” is steeped in a Christian thought. In the Catholic tradition, “vocation” refers to priestly or religious calling. During the Reformation, thinkers like Martin Luther reinterpreted the concept of “vocation” to sanctify non-ritual, non-clerical work, arguing that the baker and the blacksmith served God through their labor just as the priest did. This “Protestant work ethic” located the sacred within the worldly professions of the individual.
Kaplan, a product of early 20th-century North America, rephrased “chosenness” into the civic, Protestant-influenced idiom of his time. As sociologist Max Weber observed, one does not need to be Protestant to reproduce Protestant norms. It is enough to live in a society shaped by them. Kaplan’s milieu was steeped in the liberal Protestant values of moral earnestness and social reform articulated by thinkers like William James and Walter Rauschenbusch. Influenced also by pragmatist philosophers such as John Dewey, he sought a practical, democratic term to describe Jewish purpose.
For Kaplan’s generation, “vocation” fit because it shifted focus from supernatural status to earthly purpose. It reflected the modernist effort to reconcile reason and faith and suggested that all peoples could have their own vocations. Yet this harmonization came at a cost: In adapting Jewish traditional language to a Protestant-shaped culture, Kaplan made the covenant functional rather than relational. That is, it turned a lived relationship into a framework for ethical and social purpose. The functional view explains what religion does for human life; the relational view, embodied in “chosenness,” speaks to an ongoing bond that connects Jews to one another, to their ancestors and to what our tradition calls the Divine.
By giving up the core language [of “chosenness”], we only create a vacuum that [others] are happy to fill, allowing their distorted version to become the most prominent definition in the public square.
The ‘thick’ and the ‘thin’ of peoplehood
Where Weber helps us see Kaplan’s sociological context, anthropologist Clifford Geertz helps us understand the cultural cost of that shift. Geertz taught us to analyze culture through “thick” and “thin” description. A thin description gives only the surface facts of what people do. A thick description looks deeper and interprets the layers of meaning, context and symbol that make an action truly significant.
Kaplan’s “vocation” thinned the covenant, reducing the texture of belonging that makes a people more than an ethical idea. It became abstract, universal, applicable to anyone and therefore to no one in particular. Of course, any term can acquire thickness through lived ritual and narrative; “vocation” could do that, too. Yet “chosenness” begins with that thickness; its symbolic depth is native to the Jewish story. It is our people’s foundational myth telling of the patriarchs, the Exodus and Sinai — stories that reveal the intimate, relational nature of the covenant.
As Geertz reminds us, a healthy, vibrant culture runs on thick, particularist concepts: the unique stories, symbols and languages that bind its members together. This thick particularism is not the enemy of universal ethics; it is its fuel. Without that depth forged in the language of “chosenness,” the universal mission of tikkun olam risks becoming a vague humanitarianism with Jewish characteristics.
Confronting the shadow of ‘chosenness’
We cannot reclaim “chosenness” without staring directly into the dark shadow this concept has cast. This metaphor has been used against us for millennia. Christian supersessionism, the belief that the Church has replaced the people of Israel as the true chosen people, used our own scriptures to cast Jews as spiritually obsolete. This theological claim fueled centuries of persecution and prejudice.
At the same time, the language of “chosenness” has also been twisted internally by some Jews to promote a chauvinistic sense of superiority over non-Jews. This very misuse is why our recovery of the metaphor must be careful and ethical. The antisemitic and the Jewish-chauvinist interpretations are two sides of the same coin: Both confuse “chosenness” with superiority. They transform covenant into hierarchy and relationship into arrogance. They are examples of dangerous confirmation bias, seizing on language that can be misconstrued to justify pre-existing hatreds: hatred of Jews or hatred by Jews.
Crucially, our self-censorship does not combat these biases. Those who twist the metaphor of “chosenness” into a doctrine of supremacy will do so regardless of what we in the Reconstructionist movement say. They do not look to our liturgy or the publications on Evolve as authoritative sources. By abandoning the field and giving up this core language, we only create a vacuum that they are happy to fill, allowing their distorted version to become the most prominent definition in the public square.
Too often, Jews are told that our distinct language and practices must be softened or abandoned to be acceptable in the wider moral conversation. We are expected to be universalist without particularity, ethical without myth, spiritual without ritual. Therefore, our task is not withdrawal but reinterpretation: to offer a counter-narrative that is as morally compelling as it is emotionally resonant. To reclaim “chosenness” is, in this sense, an act of theological resistance.
“Chosenness” rooted in relational particularism allows us to speak to a Jewish sense of purpose that is grounded in covenant rather than nationalism or victimhood.
Toward a relational particularism
Kaplan’s “vocation” helped early 20th-century Jews sound modern, rational and ethical in a society shaped by Protestant universalism. Today, however, in a more pluralist culture wary of big universal claims, the challenge is no longer translation but to express difference relationally. In this socio-cultural landscape, it is time to reclaim “chosenness.”
Some will worry that speaking again of “chosenness” risks reopening the door to the supernaturalism Kaplan opposed. But reclaiming an old idea doesn’t mean reviving its old theology; it means reinterpreting it for our time. Reclaiming “chosenness” allows us to model a particularism that is confident but not supremacist. We can say: Yes, we speak of “chosenness” because it is the traditional metaphor to describe our covenantal bond that ties us to the rest of Klal Yisrael (the Jewish community) and to generations of Jews who prayed, argued and wrestled with the same language.
As Martin Buber taught, it is the I‒Thou encounter that sanctifies difference, when we meet another not as objects but partners in connection. Building on Buber, the “chosenness” language can be seen as a form of what I call relational particularism, a theology in which a people’s covenantal identity derives not from superiority or isolation but from connection: with God, with one another and with other peoples. It holds that distinctiveness is sustained through encounter, not separation.
To speak of the Jewish people as “chosen” is to affirm that we stand in a covenantal relationship, a relational bond that sustains our moral and communal life. “Chosenness” particularizes our path without denying the paths of others and the legitimacy of the metaphors they use. Every community may be “chosen” in its own way, called into covenant through its particular history and language. This is the theological equivalent of a family’s unique commitment to one another that does not diminish their love for others.
“Chosenness” remains one of the thickest symbols of Jewish covenantal imagination; to discard it would be to separate ourselves from the mythic language that has shaped our people’s moral imagination for millennia. In an era when Jewish identity is pulled between excessive particularism and fading universalism, “chosenness” rooted in relational particularism allows us to speak to a Jewish sense of purpose that is grounded in covenant rather than nationalism or victimhood. Reinterpretation is also an act of moral resistance against Jewish extremists and antisemites who weaponize the metaphor for exclusion.
Mordecai Kaplan’s genius was to show that Judaism could evolve to meet the challenges of modernity. His concept of “vocation” was an important stage in that evolution, an adaptation to the universalist, Protestant-informed norms of his time. But a civilization that truly evolves must also have the courage to re-examine its own adaptations. In reclaiming the thick, authentic metaphor of “chosenness,” we continue Kaplan’s work — not by repeating his answers but by renewing his question: How can 21st-century Jews speak of covenant with integrity and courage?
