Mordecai Kaplan’s rejection of the concept of chosenness in his Jewish theology and the Reconstructionist movement’s omission of chosenness language in its liturgy is one of the most distinctive features of the movement. In his time, Kaplan sought to challenge Jewish tendencies towards self-aggrandizement that this concept could generate. Whatever legitimate pride or comfort the concept of chosenness may have given Jews in pre-modern times, Kaplan believed that Jews living in egalitarian democracies must eschew any theological claims that could promote national chauvinism and self-centeredness.
As a scholar and teacher of modern Jewish thought, I agree that Kaplan’s commitment to democracy and opposition to national chauvinism should be a central component of Jewish ethics, theology and politics. Jewish teachers and leaders must address Kaplan’s challenge to live up to these ideals and express them Jewishly, even if they don’t always provide the same exact answers. While I personally maintain a commitment to the more traditional Jewish liturgy that preserves passages about God choosing the people of Israel, I don’t dismiss Kaplan’s challenge lightly.
In this essay, I want to revisit the stakes of Kaplan’s challenge by taking a closer look at the Torah’s claim that the people Israel are to be a “kingdom of priests,” a concept that I think does not get sufficient attention in discussions of chosenness, both by those who oppose it and those who favor it. My suggestion is that we look to Israel’s priesthood as the key through which we should understand the Jewish tradition’s theology of Divine election. By doing this, I hope to shed further light on what maintaining this theology might demand for those who preserve it, and to invite those who reject that theology to consider what elements of the “priesthood” concept might be worth preserving.
Biblical Priests Are Agents of Peace
To accomplish this, I will present several biblical images of the Israelite priesthood and suggest that the Bible consistently views Israel’s relationship to the nations of the world through the lens of Israel’s priesthood. But before I turn to the Bible, I want to share a compelling image of Aaron, the brother of Moses and the first High Priest in the Torah’s narrative, that comes from Avot DeRabbi Natan, a commentary on Pirkei Avot. In Avot, the sage Hillel teaches that we should be among the disciples of Aaron by, among other things, “loving peace (shalom) and pursuing peace, loving all people and drawing them near to the Torah.” (Avot 1:12) Avot DeRabbi Natan goes on to describe how Aaron would go to friends having arguments and convince them to make amends with each other by saying that the other was in anguish over their falling out. (Avot DeRabbi Natan 12) In this image, Aaron’s leadership is manifested in his determination to bring peace between people in the community by getting personally involved and staying connected to the people.
Bringing about peace and wholeness both within our people and in the wider world is central to the meaning of being a nation of priests.
I contend that this midrash is not just about Aaron’s extraordinary individual character; it is also about the vocation of priesthood itself, and hence I think it describes Israel’s vocation as a nation of priests. Indeed, Hillel exhorts all Jews to be like Aaron, to become a nation that loves and pursues peace, and this pursuit of peace is integral to a life of Torah. In teaching this, I think Hillel draws deeply on the biblical theology of both Aaron’s priesthood and the broader Israelite priesthood. The role of Israel’s priests, the descendants of Aaron, is to bring about peace and wholeness — not just as a cessation of conflict between people, but as a social and spiritual reality. However we might live out this teaching in our own time, I believe that bringing about peace and wholeness both within our people and in the wider world is central to the meaning of being a nation of priests.
Priests Facilitate Connection and Prayer
Let me now turn to the Bible’s description of the role of the priests, meaning Aaron and his descendants, and how that connects with the way the Bible imagines Israel’s role with respect to the nations of the world. The first and most common role of the priest is as the one who accepts and facilitates the sacrificial offerings of the people, an ancient form of religious expression we now enact through prayer. The sacrifices allowed petitioners to express gratitude, longing and regret for harm caused to others and God. While the function of the priest was to assure that they were performed properly, the rituals themselves were meant as a vehicle to connect the petitioner to God. In this sense, the priest facilitates this connection, and while the ritual is prescribed, the priest has no jurisdiction over the prayers of the petitioner or their efficacy before God. At their best, the priests should be a source of hope and support that their prayer may be accepted.
In the book of Isaiah, we find a powerful image of all the nations offering sacrifices to God in God’s holy place:
“I (God) will bring them (gentiles who observe the sabbath) to My sacred mount and let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices shall be welcome on My altar; For My House shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7)
Again, the purpose of the sacrificial worship is to pray, and the prophet asserts that the ultimate purpose of Israel’s Temple is not only for itself and its own prayers. Israel’s maintenance of the holiness of that place is priestly because it will one day facilitate the prayers of all nations.
Sources of Wisdom and Enlightenment
A second prominent role of priests is their instruction and interpretation of the commandments of the Torah. Their pedagogical role is suggested by Moses’ blessing to the various tribes, where he says of Levi: “They shall teach Your laws to Jacob and Your instructions (toratekha) to Israel” (Deuteronomy 33:10). The priests also have a specifically judicial function. As experts in interpreting the Torah, they are called upon to be consulted by all Israelites who come to Jerusalem with a challenging legal case or question. (Deuteronomy 17:9) In this judicial capacity, the priests are guardians of the Torah’s vitality and integrity, assuring that its commandments and ideals are appropriately implemented in Israelite society.
The Torah itself states that Israel’s knowledge and observance of Torah should serve as a source of wisdom to all nations:
“Observe (the laws and statutes) faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, “Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.”” (Deuteronomy 4:7)
Likewise, the prophet Isaiah imagines a time when
“the many peoples shall go and say: “Come, let us go up to the Mount of GOD, to the House of the God of Jacob; that we may be instructed in God’s ways, and that we may walk in God’s paths. For instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of GOD from Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 2:3)
Here, the mountain of Zion is a source of enlightenment, wisdom and good teachings for all peoples of the earth. The Torah that Israel studies and observes will spread beyond its boundaries to be a source of wisdom to all nations.
Facilitating Blessing
Finally, the priests are charged with blessing the people with what we now think of as “the priestly blessing” (Numbers 6:24-26). When there was a Temple in Jerusalem, it was recited daily by the priests there and incorporated into the daily Jewish liturgy that continued after the Temple’s destruction. The blessings invoke God’s favor towards the people so that they may experience all forms of well-being, culminating in a blessing for peace (shalom). This blessing for peace returns us to the image of Aaron that I discussed above. A midrash explains that peace is not just one blessing among others, but the vessel that holds all the blessings (Bamidbar Rabbah 11). I take this image to mean that peace, or wholeness as we might translate shalom, is the full realization of all blessings.
If we make the most of our tradition’s wisdom by living lives of peace and wholeness, we could come to serve all people in the world through our deeds.
This understanding of peace also sheds light on Israel’s priestly role as a source of blessing for all humanity. This idea is found quite clearly in God’s initial call to Abraham:
“Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 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 curse the one who curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)
God’s promise to Abraham is framed in international terms from the very beginning. The greatness of his descendants is that they will serve as a source of blessing for all nations. Indeed, Abraham’s saga culminates in the binding of Isaac as a sacrifice offered on Mount Moriah, the future location of the Jerusalem Temple. God’s ultimate refusal of Isaac as a sacrifice anticipates the sacrificial offerings Israel will later bring when the Temple stands, but it also suggests that this holy mountain is the place where the promise of Genesis 12:3 will be fulfilled. Returning to Isaiah, in the passage I cited above where the nations learn Torah on this holy mountain, the prophet continues:
“Thus [God] will judge among the nations and arbitrate for the many peoples, 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 know war.” (Isaiah 2:4)
This great peace between nations is an extension of the Torah’s wisdom and the blessings that flow from its observance.
Taking these three roles together — facilitating prayer, teaching and interpreting Torah, and offering blessings — we can see how each one of them is part of a life of shalom, wholeness and peace. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the rabbinic sages assured the continuity of these elements of religious life with Judaism primarily through their mastery of the Torah. But their hope was for the people to all be learned, mindful in prayer and givers of blessings to one another. However much we need leaders, teachers and models — whether priests, rabbis or some other kind — to perpetuate and maintain these practices, the ideal is for all the people to realize our people’s holiness in observing them.
My hope with this discussion so far is to draw a connection between the biblical imagery of priesthood to our contemporary religious lives. Seeing priesthood as leadership for shalom (peace and wholeness), shows how we might lift up this responsibility for each individual Jew today in our communities, a contemporary vision for how we might be a nation of priests. But this does not fully address the question of chosenness. If we Jews are supposed to be priests to the whole world, how would this work, what does this mean, and what does it say about the other religions and wisdom traditions of the world?
Reciprocal Exchange of Wisdom with Other Nations
One possible way to interpret Israelite priesthood is to say that the other nations are completely dependent on Judaism for some essential wisdom or blessing that their religious traditions lack and that Judaism alone can provide or fulfill. This idea can certainly be found in our tradition, but it is not the only way, and it is one I reject entirely. Another path would be to maintain the concept of Israel’s priesthood while rejecting the idea that the nations need our wisdom or blessing. In this way, the model of Aaron’s priestly leadership could be a guide for building our holy communities with peace and wholeness, but it would not involve any claim that other nations need our teachings. We might learn wisdom from them just as much as they might learn wisdom from us, but this path would reject the idea that there is something essential about Judaism for the other nations, as if our Torah is the sine qua non for world redemption. This is, I think, what Kaplan had in mind by rejecting chosenness, as this theological commitment could induce us to think that we are superior to other nations by virtue of receiving God’s revelation.
The deeper purpose of our tradition’s wisdom is to be in the service of all the nations of the world.
As I noted at the beginning, I use the traditional liturgy that contains chosenness language that suggests that our Torah is not only distinctive but also unique and essential to the world. When I think about how we Jews should engage other religious traditions, I would begin with the idea I articulated above — namely, that we might learn from them as much as we could learn from us. And this does indeed seem more sound as a path towards peace and wholeness in this world, especially when we still see some groups claiming superiority over others or seeking to dominate them. But I am also drawn to the vision of Genesis 12 and Isaiah 2 and 56, and I worry that if we let go of these images, we might lose touch with the aspiration that the deeper purpose of our tradition’s wisdom is to be in the service of all the nations of the world.
One way we might find a balance here is to recognize that the passages in Genesis and Isaiah are aspirational and messianic. Isaiah, in particular, is describing something that might be realized in the future should Israel be completely faithful to its Torah, a reality that is never fully actualized in our world. Perhaps this is how we could understand God’s invitation to be a nation of priests: It is an aspiration, rather than a firm promise of our indispensability. Should we make the most of our tradition’s wisdom by living lives of peace and wholeness, then we could then come to serve all people in the world through our deeds. In this way of thinking, the idea that we are chosen to be priests for others in the world is not something guaranteed; rather, it is a goal we might achieve if we truly heeded that ancient calling.
