What Does Jewish Chosenness Mean?


Compiled by Gil Student

 

Rabbi Dr. David Berger
Professor of history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School, City University of New York

Though the chosenness of Israel is a central biblical motif, an overarching theme of the Book of Genesis suggests that the seed of Abraham was selected, as it were, after the fact, following the “failure” of God’s original design for humanity. The famous statement in the Mishnah, the rabbinic code of laws, that Adam was created singly so that no one would be able to say, “My father is greater than yours,” underscores the universality of the original creation.

 

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm
President of Yeshiva University

Israel was chosen at Sinai as "a holy nation and a kingdom of priests." A "holy nation" is a mission for the polity in and for itself: to grow in sanctity as a godly people. A "kingdom of priests" is the outward reach of the Jewish enterprise in the world: to be a priest-teacher to all of humanity, inviting it by both word and example to fulfill the "image of God" in which every human being was created. The two are linked: Israel cannot teach if it is not itself informed, and therefore it must always strive to be a "holy nation." And its own inner mission is unfulfilled if it fails to communicate holinessùin its numinousness and its ethical consequencesùas "a kingdom of priests" to the rest of the world.

The Torah makes it quite clear that we were chosen neither because of our intrinsic merit nor in order to lord it over others, but by virtue of the patriarchs, especially Abraham, whose heart was "found" by God to be faithful and who was promised a posterity which would carry on his work of "proclaiming the name of God" to the world.

 

Rabbi Barry Freundel
Rabbi of Kesher Israel, an Orthodox congregation in Washington, D.C.; vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America and chairman of its ethics committee; adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University.

Chosenness means what it has always meant. Our people were given a message and a mission designed to help bring a shared morality to the world. We were not asked to bring Judaism to the world, just fundamental basic morality.

 

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