Other articles from this issue | Version in English | Version in French

The Chosen People: A contemporary Jewish perspective
Leon Klenicki

Some time ago I visited a desolate place, with gray stones and ashen-looking buildings, and only a tree here and there. It was barren like a desert. but it was not a desert with its redemptive spiritual possibilities. It was a hell made by human beings. It was Auschwitz.

I walked through its streets, so well known to my f amity who perished there in the forties. I stopped at the gas chamber. Even before reciting Kaddish in memory of my people and all of those who suffered Nazi persecution, a prayer came to my mind. It was the prayer I repeat every Friday night at the beginning of the Sabbath, while blessing the wine. The prayer says:
Ki vanu vaharta ve otanu
kidashta mikol haamim
(You have chosen us and set us apart
to be sanctified from all the peoples).

And there, standing at the doors of death for the Jewish people, for my family, I thought about what it meant to be part of the Chosen People. To belong to that 5,000 years al history, encompassing the heights and depths of hope and despair, of communion with God and alienation, of honor and horror, of love and hatred, of being in Auschwitz.

I belonged to that Chosen People. I did not experience the Holocaust personally, yet in many ways I am a survivor of the Shoah, the devastating wind that took away six million of my people, the evil blast that also destroyed millions of non-Jews. The Holocaust has made all of us, Jews as well as Christians, survivors in one way or another. We have had to face the diabolic powers and possibilities of the human nature. And in spite of that we, and very especially the Jewish people, have had to continue living, hoping and believing. For the Jewish People these encompass the obligations of being chosen.

And there, on that windy day in Poland, I thought about being part of the Chosen People. I glorified God in the Kaddish, and at the same time questioned God: "Why us? Why the Jews? Why six million of us?" Perhaps I will never have an answer to these questions.

But as a believer, I have to comprehend God's decision to choose Jews, its significance for me and my people, for my, our, relationship with God. I have to interpret and accept God's call from among ruins, God's call in the pluralism of the USA, and in the reality of the State of Israel, the beginning of our redemption. I cannot accept the old tradition of receiving a doctrine about God and, without questioning it, living accordingly. My generation, and the generation of my children, are asking questions, trying to understand a tradition within the framework of the society and world we live in. We are not trying to "modernize" our religious commitment, we want to be religious, to live God's presence in our days, in our own lives, in our very special situation.

Rather than offer an academic paper on the concept of the Chosen People, I prefer to share with you a personal reflection based on the consideration of certain basic Biblical texts. It will be a reflection sharing a spirituality in search of meaning.

Chosen People, a common designation for the people of Israel, expresses the idea that the people of Israel possess a special and unique relationship with God. But the term requires clarification. The very expression "Chosen People' makes me tremble. It brings back an impression of triumphalism, an arrogance of the heart, that I associate with fanaticism and a lack of respect for other people. Such arrogance has been manifested throughout centuries of Christian domination in Europe, and even in the United States. It is a sign of vainglory and contempt when the idea of an election becomes so total that it negates the religious convictions and commitments of other people. To feel that one is chosen to denigrate others is a transgression of a real covenantal relationship of Jews and Christians with God. To say, for example, that God does not listen to the prayers of the Jews is not only a sign of arrogance and contempt, but also of absurdity. Respect and charity are essential to the commitment of the religious person.

Then how can I as a Jew say that I am one of God's Chosen People? Is not this a form of arrogance? Am I not denying those of other faiths the glory of God's love and grace? The answer is simple. No, I am not. I do not claim God's exclusive light. I merely claim to be a member of that people which, the Bible tells us, were chosen to enter into a particular covenant with God.

The Concept of Chosen People in Biblical Writings

My reflection will focus on the Biblical understanding of the concept of Chosen People and will take several texts as the basis for my own contemporary understanding of being chosen.

One of Judaism's most fundamental elements is that of God's election of the Jews as Chosen People. It is a concept so compelling as to render it virtually impossible to comprehend Biblical events or rabbinic tradition without it. The consciousness of election was the basis of Jewish education for generations, and forged the inner strength necessary for carrying God's message in spite of persecution and death. Despite the concerted effort of anti-Semites to degrade the Jew in his own eyes, the Jewish people succeeded in retaining dignity and pride in the knowledge that their ancestors stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and accepted the burden and joy of being God's Chosen People.

Several words are used in the Biblical terminology to designate chosenness. They are important in the understanding of the concept. One is the Hebrew root bahar, to choose, expressing, with unmistakable intent, the nature and manner in which the people of Israel are understood to be the people of God. This term, in addition to its secular meaning (Genesis 13:11), is used to indicate a choice of persons by God for a particular role or office, such as a priest: "For the Lord your God has chosen him and his descendants to come out of all your tribes, to be in attendance and service in the name of the Lord, for ever" (Deuteronomy 18:5; 1 Sam 2:28); or a king, as David says to Michal, Saul's daughter, "Before the Lord, who chose me instead of your father, and above all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel" (II Sam.6:21; Kings 8:16).

This word, bahar, is also used to indicate the setting aside of a particular place for the site of the sanctuary, as, for example, in Deuteronomy 12:5. The verb bahar indicates a role for the people or places that have been chosen by God, so in the Deuteronomic writings, it has a particular theological meaning relating to the people of Israel: "For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: Of all the peoples on earth, the Lord your God chose you to be his treasured people" (Deut. 7:6; cf. 14:2). This is the essence of the covenant which signifies the fundamental relationship between God and Israel and is referred to throughout the entire Hebrew Bible. However contemporary critical scholarship may define that covenant, and there are a number of competing theories, there is general agreement that the Biblical authors view such a relationship as essential.

Another term used to describe God's choice of the Chosen People appears in Amos 3:2. It is the verb yada (to know intimately): "I have known only you of all the peoples of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities" points to this special relationship. The second half of this verse is one of the classic passages which emphasizes that the doctrine of election does not imply the conferring of special privileges, but imposes extra obligations and responsibility.

Both terms, bahar and yada, indicate specific aspects of the choice. One is God's request for service. The term bahar points out Israel's commitment to witness God and act accordingly, personally and as a community. Yada is to know. To know as a mutual process of comprehension. It entails God's knowledge of his Chosen People and as his people we are obligated to know God. It means the duty of understanding the sacred commitment of every day's existence. These two verbs will be central in my own search for the meaning of chosenness.

Being chosen was not a sign of the superiority of the Hebrew People. It was the beginning of a learning process that would mold their characters and direct their individual and community existence. The divine choice calls for reciprocal human response. This is clearly staled in the text of Joshua 24:22: "You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him." Israel is obligated to "keep his laws and observe his teachings" (Psalm 105:45). The Jewish people in their covenantal relationship and mission are to become "a light" to the ends of the world (Is. 49:6). A whole discussion in Isaiah 49 of Israel, God's servant, is based on the idea of the task to which God has appointed the Jewish people: that of spreading God's salvation (cf. Is. 49:6).

Further, although the people of Israel may not presume that God will always consider them favorable, regardless of their acts (e.g. Hosea 1:9), the thought of absolute rejection appears unimaginable: "Yet even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, and I leave my covenant with them: For I, the Lord, am their God" (Lev.26:44). The covenant between God and the Jewish people is timeless and unending. Despite the doubts they may have about each other, neither party can break it. It is renewed despite history as exemplified in Jeremiah 31:31.

A Contemporary Biblical Understanding

An understanding of the concept of Chosen People in the framework of the contemporary Jewish experience is based on the textual study of sections of two books of the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible. One is the Book of Genesis and the other the Book of Exodus.

The Book of Genesis refers to two special events that mark the beginning of the concept of God's election. One is the story of Noah. God floods the world and saves a family and animals that later on will populate the whole world. God chose Noah, as representing humanity. Noah is a partner with whom God will build a covenant in order to bring the definite Kingdom to the world. We read in Chapter 9 of Genesis that the choice of Noah, God's revelation to him and the family, involves Gods revelation and the heart of that revelation was the establishment of a covenant. It is an arrangement of seven laws that will keep order in the world and allow Noah and his family to build upon those laws a daily existence of spirituality. The seven laws were concerned with theft, justice, homicide, illicit intercourse, eating the limb of living creatures (a hint of the Kashrut laws of rabbinic Judaism), idolatry and blasphemy.

The text describes Noah listening to but not completely accepting the covenant offered by God. The commandments to shape daily existence are not followed, and Noah betrays what is promised in the text. It is said that Noah walks with God, but essentially he does not become a partner with God. This first election of God, God's choice of a new humanity through Noah, requires a careful consideration in order to understand Jewish covenant and mission. God is telling us that to be chosen is not a unique individual event, that God is asking all people to follow witnessing vocations.

In looking into the meaning of God's choice of my people, it is my obligation to recognise the place of non-Jewish religious people in God's design and specially Christianity. I must ask myself, do we Jews recognise Christianity as a co-participant in God's design? Can Jews accept Jesus as a covenantal messenger of God with a specific mission to the world not already committed to a covenant with God? Can I personally, also deeply involved in dialogue work, respond to these questions? The response is crucial to the significance of my own concept of being called by God, being covenantally chosen. I am not alone in God's presence. There are others with whom I share creation, Gods world. God places my people in the midst of history, with other communities. Bitter memories, however, prevent our understanding an acceptance of their place in God's design. Our memories hold the image of Christian contempt that helped directly or indirectly the effectiveness of Nazism.

Christianity as a covenant of God needs our understanding. We can, as was done by Rabbi Elijah Benamozegh, a 19th century Italian-Jewish thinker, understand Christianity from a reconsideration of the first covenant of God. That is, the covenant of God with Noah, Genesis 9, followed by a covenant of God with a people that the Eternal created through Abraham and Sarah. The first covenant, according to our tradition, is the covenant of God with humanity. The second is the special one with the people of Israel. Shouldn't we consider Noah and Jesus as Benamozegh does, as ways of God to humanity? Shouldn't we start considering double covenantal obligations as parts of the people of God? These are some of the questions that are raised by our consideration of Noah's election, and so of our own.

Abraham's Call

In Genesis 12 an individual becomes God's partner. God calls Abram who is asked to change his ways and his life, who is promised a special land, and who becomes the covenantal partner of God. Out of Abram and Sarai will come the founding parents of the Jewish people. Abram accepted the challenge, following God's command. He travelled through the Middle East, encountered kings, fought wars, and very slowly adapted himself to a special spiritual condition, that is, the acceptance of God. That would explain Abram's change of name. Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah: two new people. To be touched by God, to be called by God, is to become a different person. To become a covenantal partner requires an inner transformation.

Abraham is ordered to walk before God. This implies a way of being, a way of manifesting God. Of Noah, it is said that he walked with God (Genesis 6:9). Bashi, a Jewish Biblical commentator, explains that Noah needed God's support to maintain his righteousness. To be in front of God, however, is to proclaim a trust and be trusted, to live a special existence, lonely at times but not alienated, projecting and sharing a spirituality that gives a creative meaning to daily existence.

The stories of Noah and Abraham offer hints as to the special responsibility of being chosen. They illustrate an individual who chooses, and one who does not choose, God as partner in a special relationship. Noah couldn't accept such a challenge; Abraham did. He separated himself from family and country, following God's way, sanctifying everyday life. Abraham is a type of faithful response to God. He follows God's command and is singled out to become a total being. His call and this unique experience will influence his life forever, as it should ours in order to live a genuine relationship with God.

To respond to God's call in all forms and nuances is basic to the covenantal relationship. God's call obligates a person to listen and accept divine choice. Abraham agreed to be chosen, to relate to God. His acceptance did not make him a superior person, better than others. His acceptance simply committed him to inner change, a search for perfection.

Abraham's experience calls for a contemporary reflection. Should we accept God only by imposition? Should we accept God only on the basis of a long history and tradition? I know personally, as many other religious people know, that my response to God is a response to a call. It may be based in family traditions, religious customs and rituals, but it is a personal summons. I respond to being a member of the Chosen People by accepting God's election.

I must listen to God's call, to a Presence that brings meaning and purpose to my life. I have to recognize, accept and believe in God. To believe is a slow process of growth overcoming childish concepts of God that seem to be part of our adulthood. We accept evolution in the understanding of science or culture. But when it comes to God we refer once and again to the bearded gentle old man. Why not think of God as a concerned woman, the prototype of the Jewish mother? We have to go beyond images to personal responsibility, growing in God. To understand God in our existence is to comprehend our totality, the meaning of human creation and purpose. It is to make order in the anarchy of daily struggle, sense prevailing over vanity.

Our search is hard, at times it seems meaningless. Yet at any moment it can be a reality. Yehuda Hale-vi described this suspension of time and space in his poem:
God,where shall I find you? High and hidden in Your place; And where shall I not find You? The world is full of your glory. I have sought your nearness;
With all my heart have I called you, And going out to meet You I found YOU coming toward me.

Suddenly God is our source. God is our peace, the partner of hope. We are aware of God only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the sense of denying the self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy. The recognition of God is the YIRAT ADONAI, the fear of God, of the Biblical tradition. It is more than fear. It is the awesome acceptance of God, the starting point of being called, human perfection springing from communion with God.

This acceptance is a painful reckoning of the soul in need of inner silence. It is a silence expressed in prayer. Like Abraham, I need to listen in my silence, to God's call, to listen to God's choice, to accept being chosen. The call is an invitation to think and rethink my inner life. It is a process rooted in a tradition but framed by contemporary human situation. To accept God's choice is a special stage of religiosity. In our history, it has often been a stage that we have reached only after a cycle of exile and return.

The Book of Exodus and Covenant

The imagery of the Book of Exodus points out this aspect of election. The slavery suffered under Pharaoh, the servitude, avodah, under a tyrant, has to be cleansed from the heart in order to become a service, avodah, to God, to the Redeemer.

Exodus is a root experience. It is a moment of transformation. It is a foundational stage in the relationship of God to the people of Israel. Exodus forms the character and commitment of the people.

The Caesura

The epic marks the transition from individual experience of God to a community-national vocational experience. The community becomes a people acting in the realm of history completing the work of creation. God is welcome as a liberator. He is also a partner in the covenantal Sinai encounter and this reality will be one of the most difficult matters to work out by the people liberated from Egypt. It took a generation in the desert to be able to respond to God's command. It takes a personal experience of the desert, solitude and inner struggle, to accept God's choice and what it involves in personal life. It is a caesura, a break in daily reality to accept what Martin Buber described as a vertical insertion of the eternal in history. The break refers to both personal and national life.

The caesura experience plays a major role in the Jewish vocation of God, in the understanding of God's choice. There are times of loss and recovery, of exile and return. It is inaugurated with the Egyptian exile of slavery and the return to the Promised Land after Sinai. It reoccurs as a vital experience with the Babylonian exile and a return to Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah. There is also the exile of the Temple, year 70 of the Common Era, and a return to the sources by the action of the rabbis' rethinking of the covenantal relationship. Exile and return are times of crisis or reckoning and consideration, rethinking the meaning of the covenant, its ever-changing meaning (Jer.31:31). In our own days we have experienced exile and return, the death of the Holocaust and the return to the Promised land. The creation of the State of Israel opens a new time of Jewish history and Jewish witnessing of God. The 20th century is a caesura, a rethinking of the covenantal relationship that will occupy our reflection for a long period of time to come, looking for new dimensions of the God-Israel covenant. It is, once again, the road from serfdom to redemption.

Exile and Return as a Form of Teshuvah in History

Exodus, exile and return, mark the beginning of our historical existence. Leo Baeck points out that "in the mystery and the commandment of God, in the covenant which it had filled, this people discovered its foundation...it recognized itself as an historical people, even as it thought of itself as a metaphysical people" ( This People Israel. The Meaning of Jewish Existence). This awareness of a vocation of service to God and fellow people in history is related to the recognition of God's sovereignty and God's covenant as a source of redemption. God is considered and accepted as partner of a treaty, the Sinai covenant, and history attains a meaning and a purpose. To be chosen, is to enter in a covenantal partnership involving mutual obligation and human commitment.

Every epic of exile and return entails an experience of inner transformation. This historical reality is clearly perceived in the account of the Babylonian exile. The Jewish people are taken as prisoners and have to live in Babylon, outside Jerusalem and the Promised Land. The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and several Psalms, show a people in anguish asking themselves if they can believe or serve God outside of Jerusalem. Jeremiah 29 will point out that God asked the people to build a new life, to let their children marry and to build an inner temple in response to the challenge of exile.

The exile ended and the return began when King Cyrus allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and the Promised Land. Again the Jewish people had to cross a desert to get there. This time it was a spiritual wasteland out of which they were led by Ezra who brought them into the Promised Land of a deepened covenantal understanding. In the Book of Nehemiah, Chapter 8, we read that Ezra the scribe is asked to bring the scroll of the teaching of Moses (we believe it was the Book of Deuteronomy), to read and explain the text to all men and women present in Jerusalem. Ezra was doing more than a simple reading of the Bible. He was explaining, expounding, giving new dimensions to the meaning of the Torah message. Ezra, the theologian par excellence, was starting a spiritual movement by which the word of God became a contemporary experience. Through living that experience, expounding on the meaning of the text, Jews were able to understand their historical circumstances and exercise their covenantal relationship in their life. This should also be the personal response to our spiritual exile: to return to the source, to follow a way.

A Way of God

Thiswasdone historically by Ezra's commentary that was completed by the work of the Hassidim in Hellenistic days and by the Pharisees 2000 years ago. The commentaries were called Halakah. It is a noun deriving from the verb halakh, to go. The word describes perfectly the real meaning of the circumstances of the Jewish people. To be religious is a way of being and going, of implementing in everyday reality the experience of God, the call of God, the choice of God. The halakhic explanation of the text covers both the existential and the ritual meaning of the Biblical text, allowing the Jewish people to adopt the commanding voice in their daily lives. Covenant requires a "way" to portray God and the covenantal existence.

The ha/akhicinterpretation is not followed by all Jews since modern times. Many have followed practically all its dimensions, and others have denied all of it or part of it. Many other Jews feel that the halakhah is a historical process that needs adaptation. Halakhah does not end with a rabbinic codification, but continues up to our days and into the future. Its present understanding requires a reckoning. It is Teshuvah, a re-examination of our way to God.

The halakhic way needs, as a human endeavour inspired by God, a reexamination to implement God in our life. It is Teshuvah. The Hebrew word Teshuvah conveys the meaning of repentance, but goes beyond this concept. Teshuvah is a process of spiritual renewal, an inward change involving a personal crisis, and a return to God. The root of this noun is shuv, to return, and Teshuvah is simply a "turning". The "turning" carries along a course of events, stages in the inner life of the individual in the community. Teshuvah is a process involving several stages: A recognition of theitransgression a reckoning of the soul, a real conscientization, awareness, of their mistakes, and finally a response. This response entails a change of heart; prayer and confession as well as action. The Baal Teshuvah, the individual who returns to God and to himself as a member of the covenant, is an example of Jewish spirituality, denoting a person's recognition of God and past mistakes. The human being repents, but only after recognizing the whole transgression, confessing it, making it part of his conscience and expressing pain in the concrete reality of his everyday life. The Baal Teshuvah is a person transformed by his/her return to God. That person's days will have illuminating insight, a different meaning.

The present process of Teshuvah requires a consideration of my being religious at the end of the 20th century, my relationship with God, and the concept of Chosen People. It is also a personal consideration of being called and chosen.

There are several responses to this process of inner examination and response. The Teshuva examination can be described as a trip from the outside to the inside, from Western culture and our society to covenant and Sinai. It can also be a trip from the outside, from the West, to a sort of ghetto, trying to relive a way of living that was a reality in Eastern Europe two centuries ago. One is a return to the covenantal relationship incorporating Western cultural values into our spirituality. The other possibility of Teshuvah is a return to the covenantal relationship negating all cultural values and contemporary life. This trend is exemplified in certain trends of the Baal Teshuvah movement, a movement that returns to the sources and experiences it by reproducing in everyday existence the life of Jewish Eastern Europe of the 19th century. It is going from a golden ghetto of Western culture to the dreamy duplication of an Eastern Europe religious existence. We have to do Teshuva as a response to 20th century history, my history, my life with God, doubting, asking impossible questions, living with the image of that wasteland, the evil of Auschwitz.

Teshuvah after Auschwitz

I referred in the beginning of my presentation to my visit to Auschwitz when I thought about the concept of Chosen People. I am still thinking about it. The thought of chosenness after the Holocaust will occupy me the rest of my life. But I have to respond in my present situation to this matter and adapt it to my own contemporary life. Teshuvah implies a process of reexamination of our souls which have been enchanted by Western culture. I have to examine what the West has offered my people since modern days. Toleration was the way by which the West tried to repair centuries of ecclesiastical and secular persecution and segregation of Jews from European life. We had been second-class citizens since Constantine's days. Second-class citizens who tried to become normal citizens through their incorporation into European life. But tolerance acknowledged the existence of Jews and Judaism but it never accepted Jews and Judaism. This is the difference between toleration and pluralism. One acknowledges, the other accepts the different commitments. We were enchanted by the illusions of Western culture, by the illusion of what we thought was acceptance, a false hope that led the Jewish people to the ovens. Our reconsideration of the West doesn't mean negation of Western values and Western culture. It means a revaluation of how much we conceded to Western secularism hoping for acceptance. It also means that through our interpretation of Halakah, our way inspired by God, we should accept, adapt, and live freely within the framework of Western culture, but never surrendering the values, traditions and beliefs of our covenant with God.

The Teshuvah means a rethinking of the concept of Chosen People. I would prefer at this time of our reckoning to speak, as Eugene Borowitz pointed out, of covenant instead of chosenness, covenant as a partnership in redemption. Teshuvah is an understanding of God's call, and also of God's apparent silence at the ovens, of God's presence in Jerusalem, and of God in our prayers and our daily life. In that covenantal understanding we have to recognize the meaning of am segulah, a people with a vocation.

This is a time of crisis, that calls for faith, a faith that asks the question, "Am I chosen?" Yes, I am. I have made a choice, have chosen God and accepted covenant. I have chosen to reckon with and reexamine God's call. I am yearning for our long-delayed redemption. Yearning, while I work at it. This is the meaning of choice and the responsibility of being part of God's people. We are a people with a vocation to serve and project God's covenant in the hell of concentration camps as well as in the goodness of a pluralistic society.

The popular term for the Jews is "The Chosen People." I would prefer to think of us as a chosen people. Since Biblical times there are people who have found other paths to God. My way is not the only one. It is simply mine and my people's. It is a way built on thousands of years of history and tradition and on contemporary inner struggle and search. I believe that all people who live a religious life, who have chosen God, are in turn God's people. If we can accept one another's religious vocations we will abolish much of the source of the evil that has infected the world. Will we not then be helping to make the promised Kingdom of God a reality? Perhaps it is for this task, the Kingdom, we have all been chosen.

Rabbi Leon Klenicki is Director of the Department of Interfaith Affairs of the Anti-Defamation League of Binai B'rith.