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Back to Question of the Week Q: We are having a discussion on "The Chosen People" in my film studies class and I wondered if you could clarify whether or not it is true that the Jews were not the first people that G-d offered his laws to, but we were the first people to accept them and therefore we were dubbed the "chosen people." Or is it true that we are called "The Chosen People" because G-d chose us? Jennifer |
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A: First, I'm afraid I'm too cognisant of my own human limitations to claim to know the "truth" about God's actions more than two thousand years ago. I mean, I haven't even seen the film you're referring to, never mind being able to provide the truth about God! However, If you want to know what Jewish tradition says about the issue of chosen-ness, I can tell you some of that. Note, though, that as with almost everything, there is not just one Jewish understanding of what it means to be the "chosen People." (Of course, there are rabbis who will say they know the one Jewish truth of these matters, but you're not at their web-site.) So, let's start at the beginning. The Bible indicates that God chose the Jews without any explanation. In the Torah, God speaks to Abraham out of nowhere. No explanation is given as to why him. The Tanakh [Hebrew Bible] sometimes depicts God's relationship with the Jews as being based on a special love that God had for our patriarchs. The upshot of this version of chosen-ness is that no matter how bad we get, God is not going to totally wipe us out, like what happened to lots of other peoples. (Originally, some of the prophets also seemed to believe that Jerusalem and the Temple would never be destroyed because of God's special relationship with them and with the Davidic dynasty. That was a theology that didn't stand the test of time.) Sometimes, in Tanakh, Jewish "chosen-ness" is understood as if God had been a king without a country and came and chose us for his country. He looks after us and we do His will. Finally, some parts of the Tanakh don't seem to believe that the Jews are chosen at all: God rewards and punishes all peoples, including the Jews, according to a divine plan and/or according to their actions. The idea that God offered the Torah to all the other peoples and only the Jews chose to accept it is a post-biblical rabbinic midrash. Obviously some of the rabbis were uncomfortable theologically with the idea that the Jewish people had a special relationship with God based on nothing but God's whim. They also sought to explain what it was about Abraham that led God to make a covenant with him. Some possibilities: he rationally deduced God's existence and uniqueness, whereupon God revealed Itself to him. Or: He was a very good person, kind to strangers, etc. A very different rabbinic midrash pictures the Israelites as also being hesitant to take the Torah, but God, wanting to give the Torah to human beings, held Mount Sinai over their heads and threatened to bury them under it if they didn't accept. (Talmud Shabbat 88a) Skipping ahead a millennium or two, Reform Judaism has traditionally understood the Jews to be chosen only in the sense that they have a particular historical mission to be a "light unto the nations," bringing the teachings of ethical monotheism to the whole world. Finally, in this century, a group of Jews and their rabbis, called Reconstructionists, have made the claim that the Jews are not chosen at all and that, because of the danger of even subconscious chauvinism that may result, it is spiritually harmful to claim that they are. Those are some of the many Jewish teachings about whether, how, and why God chose the Jews. I hope that's helpful. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz |
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