This is certainly a hot time to be revisiting the question of chosenness. After Oct. 7 and the destruction of Gaza, we have to morally ask what the sources of a strand are within Judaism that certainly has a great deal of political power in Israel right now — a strand that tends towards Jewish supremacy and a dehumanization of all others — and what can we do to address them. A robust makhloket, or holy argument, is called for about how we relate to chosenness.
But makhloket is not the same thing as rejection. And while I have a great deal of respect for my Reconstructionist teachers and colleagues who are arguing for the necessity of excising references to chosenness from Jewish ritual, my Reconstructionist training and my 10 years in the rabbinate have shown me how important it is to reconstruct even the most problematic concepts that we have inherited rather than to try to excise them. And chosenness, when we consider its Torah-grounded implications, is actually fertile ground for such reconstruction.
Chosen Without a Chooser?
There are logical arguments for excising chosenness, which I find easy to rebut. The first argument is the God problem — that in Reconstructionist theology, there just isn’t the Big Guy in sky, and so there cannot be a chosen without a Chooser. I don’t buy it. As a Reconstructionist Jew, I believe that I can have obligations without an Obligator in the sky. I believe that humans can be called without a specific Caller, and so I have no logical objection to the concept of chosenness, even absent a Chooser.
Prayers We Don’t Believe?
Then there is the liturgical integrity problem: How can we say something that we don’t fully believe and don’t fully want to believe? And to that I say, I look out on Friday evening as I lead the community in the psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat and see congregants that I know identify as atheists enthusiastically singing, Hashem la’mabul yashav, vayeshev Hashem Melech le’olam (“God is enthroned at the flood; God is enthroned as king forever!”) during Psalm 29! We still begin most of our blessings with the liturgical formulation, Barukh atah Hashem, Elokeinu Melekh ha’olam, invoking a God-as-king image that very few of my congregants believe in, and I certainly don’t, logically. This essay is not the place for the justifications of why we use liturgies we don’t literally believe; suffice it to say that we have those justifications.
We must absolutely reject a concept of chosenness (as the Torah does) that the Jewish people have been granted an automatic moral high ground, or unconditional and unique rights.
Chosen for What?
And then we come to moral argument, which is certainly the crux of the problem: the assertion that chosenness reinforces a highly problematic ethic of Jewish supremacy — one that certainly exists and is doing damage in the world right now. As someone who is absolutely committed to challenging manifestations of oppression, including Jewish supremacy, can I defend language about chosenness?
And the answer to that is, appropriately, a question: chosen for what?
What does it mean — what could it mean — when we call ourselves “chosen”?
And for this, I find it very instructive to look (surprise, surprise!) to the Torah, and specifically, to a moment in Torah that is, to my reading, all about competing visions of chosenness.
In Parashat Korakh, Korakh leads a rebellion against Moses’ authority. The substance of this rebellion, in Korakh’s own words, expressed in Numbers 16:3, is:
All the community are holy, all of them, and Hashem is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above Hashem’s congregation?
Korach is doing a sleight of hand here: He is taking an aspirational instruction, “You shall be holy” (Leviticus 19:2), and reframing an aspiration as an ontological state that confers privilege.
As the revered biblical interpreter Nechama Leibowitz teaches, Korach and his followers
interpret the mission of holiness, the role of “chosen people” with which they had been charged by God, in the sense of conferring on them superiority and privilege, rather than as constituting a call to shoulder extra duties and responsibilities. God demanded of them, “Ye shall be holy,” that is to say: “Show yourselves holy by your deeds! For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: and the Lord has chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself [sic].” The titles of “special people,” “holy people,” were in the nature of demand notes presented by the Almighty for them to honor by deeds of holiness. Instead they took them to be titles of distinction conferring privileges on them.[1]
And this is where I see one of the two real dangers of chosenness — not in believing that the Jewish people are set to live by certain set of aspirations, but in believing that the Jewish people have been granted an automatic moral high ground, or unconditional and unique rights. We must absolutely reject such a concept of chosenness, as Torah does.
We are chosen to aspire to a moral standard that is very difficult to fulfill and is an epic, multigenerational challenge.
Chosenness Is Conditional
In fact, Torah is very clear that our chosenness does not grant us unconditional rights to either Divine favor or the land of Israel. In multiple places in Torah, we are warned that if we do not observe shmita (the sabbatical year), if we do not live justly, if we worship idols, then the land will vomit us up, and we will be exiled. We have no greater inherent right to the land of Israel than those who dwelled there before, and who were themselves (according to the Torah) expelled for their own inability to live up to the standard that the land requires (an unfortunately timely lesson).[2]
These two conflicting ideas of chosenness also play out, according to our commentators, in the conflict between Abram and his nephew Lot in Genesis 13, when Lot’s herdsman quarrel with Abram’s herdsman. No reason is given in the Torah text for the quarrel, but medieval commentator Rashi teaches on Genesis 13:7:
Lot’s shepherds were wicked men and grazed their cattle in other people’s fields. Abram’s shepherds rebuked them for this act of robbery, but they replied, “The land has been given to Abram, and since he has no son as heir, Lot will be his heir: consequently this is not robbery.” Scripture, however, states: “The Canaanite and the Perizzite abode then in the land,” so that Abram was not yet entitled to possession.[3]
According to Rashi’s interpretation, Lot’s shepherds believed that chosenness confers immediate special privileges. But in every interaction that Abram (later called Abraham) has with the peoples of the land, he shows deference to them as its rightful inhabitants. Abram is able to live in the aspirational sense of chosenness, hoping that his descendants might be worthy to possess the land. In the meantime, for his lifetime, God ’s promise apparently inspires Abram to be a good neighbor to the people among whom he dwells.[4]
The Lot or Korakh model of chosenness understands ourselves as automatically morally superior, or automatically privileged, khas vekhalilah (God forbid!). The Avram or Moshe model understands that we are chosen to aspire to a moral standard that is very difficult to fulfill, and that it is an epic, multigenerational challenge. Torah clearly militates towards the Abram or Moshe model, which draws a bright line between the aspiration of chosenness and a posture of Jewish supremacy.
Non-Exclusive Chosenness Is Found in the Torah
But what does it mean for a people to even aspire to be chosen from among all other nations? The other danger of chosenness is the idea of exclusive chosenness — the concept that the Jewish people have a unique call, and no one else does.
But in an era in which we celebrate cultural diversity (or at least aspire to), why shouldn’t we understand different peoples to be chosen for different functions? The Jewish people did, in fact, receive the written Torah, and continue to create the Torah shebe’al peh, the oral Torah. Muslims received the Qu’ran; Christians, Jesus. I have no problem with saying asher bakhar banu mikol ha’amim venatan lanu et Torato, as I understand that we were chosen for Torah, as the Christians were chosen for Jesus, as the Muslims were chosen for the Qu’ran, as Hindus were chosen for the Vedas, etc.
Avoiding the concept of chosenness does not actually remove the danger of an ideology of Jewish supremacy. In fact, it can give us excuses not to examine our biases.
There is precedent within the Torah itself for us to understand ourselves as not exclusively chosen: In Deuteronomy 2:5, Hashem warns the people not to provoke the Edomites as they travel along their territory, “I have given the hill country of Seir as a possession to Esau.” A little further along, in verse 9, Hashem instructs,
Do not harass the Moabites or provoke them to war. For I will not give you any of their land as a possession; I have assigned Ar as a possession to the descendants of Lot.[5]
And most beautifully, while Parashat Kedoshim opens with the commandment to aspire to be holy, the haftarah assigned to this Torah portion opens with Amos 9:7:
To Me, O Israelites, you are just like the Cushites — declares GOD. True, I brought Israel up from the land of Egypt, but also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.
A definitive warning against holding our own chosenness as an exclusive privilege!
The fact is that I know plenty of ideological Reconstructionists who are committed to the rejection of chosenness and say faithfully asher kervanu while believing in usually subtle and sometimes explicit ways that though God didn’t choose us, Jews are somehow inherently more ethical, more intelligent, more compassionate than other people. For sociological reasons, of course. Because of our history, or our culture, or our inherited trauma. Avoiding the Torah concept of chosenness does not actually remove the danger of an ideology of Jewish supremacy. In fact, it can give us excuses not to examine our biases.
And removing chosenness also takes us out of serious conversation with our fellow Jews who take Torah seriously. If we reject the entire concept of chosenness, then we effectively cede it to a supremacist interpretation.
Far better, to my mind, to claim and actively wrestle with the concept, to keep a stake in the conversation and to remind ourselves that we have been chosen for an aspiration, not a set of privileges, and that we are not the only chosen people.
[1] Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Bamidbar. Israel: Maor Wallach Press, p. 183.
[2] See Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 4 and Deuteronomy 28, for example.
[3] Sefaria.org translation.
[4] With thanks to Rabbi David Seidenberg for this insight, at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/are-you-a-friend-of-abraham-or-destroyer-of-the-land/
[5] Gratitude to Rabbi Shai Held, for pointing out this insight in his first essay on Devarim in The Heart of Torah.
