Four ways to cherish the 'chosenness' of the Jews

(JNS) - The idea that the Jews are the "Chosen People" is not particularly fashionable, even among many Jews. It's viewed as sectarian, supremacist and even racist. Here are four ways that all of us, Jews and non-Jews, can embrace the idea.

The Jews are chosen to choose life

Near the end of the Torah in the 19th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses, in his final address, told us that we need to make a choice. Forty years beforehand, he led us out of slavery in Egypt, and we became a free people. He led us to Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah, and we became Bnei Chorin-a people with the freedom to choose. At the end of his life, Moses told us what to choose: "With Heaven and Earth as witnesses, I have placed before you life and death, blessing and curse, and I call for you this day, to choose life."

Ever since those words were first spoken more than 3,000 years ago, the Jews have been choosing life. The last 2,000 years of exile have been filled with examples of difficult circumstances in which "choosing life" was not easy. But we have followed our teacher's instructions and have stubbornly chosen life.

The first way of embracing the Jews' chosenness is to view it as the Jews' "choosing-ness." We are the people with an unshakeable commitment to choosing life.  

The Jews are chosen to survive and thrive

The Jews have been ruled and often oppressed by the great powers of the Middle East-the ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Medes, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines and many more. This long period of foreign domination ended on May 14, 1948, when the British flag came down, and the blue-and-white Star of David went up. All that is left of the ancient empires that ruled Israel are museum relics. However, the nation that was oppressed by all the great Middle Eastern powers is now the mightiest in the region.

Before Western civilization conquered and connected the world, thousands of native peoples lived on our planet. Each had a unique language, culture and spiritual tradition with most of them residing in the land of their ancestors. Anthropologists tell us that in California alone, some 500 distinct cultural groups existed before the arrival of the Europeans. Very few of these survived the confrontation with the juggernaut of Western civilization. Yet somehow, the Jewish people managed to survive-and not just survive but to thrive. They became leading contributors to the cultures of the societies in which they lived. Most exceptionally, they maintained their native Jewish way of life, their connection to the land of Israel and their yearning to return to that land.

We just celebrated the Jewish holiday that marks the first time the Jewish people successfully confronted the overwhelming power and allure of Western (Greek) civilization. This feat of cultural and spiritual resilience has been repeated countless times since then. The lights of the chanukiah are still shining more brightly than ever and in more places on Earth than ever before.

The Jewish people are chosen for a special physical and spiritual vitality and a special light to shine in the whole world.

The Jews are chosen to bless the world

Jews constitute just 0.2 percent of the world's population, but nearly one-quarter of Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine have gone to Jews. Likewise, the Jewish contribution to innovative technology, the arts, social justice, political causes and more is way out of proportion to our numbers. There is something in the Jewish psyche that gives us a special drive to dream of a more perfect world and to help move us toward that better world.

The Jews' chosenness is not an entitlement to special privilege; it's an obligation to bestow blessing. As God told our forefather, Abraham: "Through your descendants, all the nations of the earth will be blessed." The Jews are the people committed to bringing blessings to humankind.

The Jews are chosen to be God's beloved

The Jewish wedding takes place beneath a special canopy, the chuppah, under which the bride (kallah) and groom (chatan) become husband and wife. Surrounding the canopy are the family and guests.

For the bride and groom, it's one of the most special and intimate moments of their lives. At the beginning of the ceremony, the bride encircles the groom seven times. Then the groom encircles the bride's finger with a ring. Then he declares: "You are kadosh (sacred) to me." In this ceremony, the separated souls of the bride and groom become intertwined with one another. It is such an intimate and special moment. In light of this, it would seem more appropriate to keep the walls of the chuppah closed for privacy. However, tradition dictates that the walls of the chuppah remain open, and everyone present can witness this intimacy.

Something very special happens then. There's a wave of love and joy that flows out from the chuppah and fills the assembled guests with a spirit of love and joy. Rather than just a private intimate experience, the wedding becomes a collective experience of love and joy. It seems that the more intensely and exclusively the bride and groom are focused on one another, the more intense the shared experience of love among all those present. If the bride or groom violates the intimacy by waving to the crowd, the spell is broken, and the shared sense of love and joy disappears. Somehow, it's the very particularity of their love only for one another that opens up the channel of love for everyone around them.

In Chapter 14 of Deuteronomy, Moses declares to the Jewish people: "You are kadosh to the Lord, your God; the Lord has chosen you to be a treasured people for Him, out of all the nations that are upon the earth." Just as out of all the women of the world, a man's wife is his beloved, so, too, out of all the nations of the world, the Jews are God's beloved.

There's a name for the experience of love and joy that happens at a Jewish wedding. It's called the Shechinah, the manifestation of the Divine Presence, which we experience as love and joy and a desire to come close to each other and our Creator.

I learned from my teacher, Rabbi Daniel Kohn of Bat Ayin, that what happens on a small scale at weddings is meant to happen on a big scale when the Jewish people reciprocate God's desire for intimacy with us.

We've been scarred and traumatized by exile. But God has been faithful to us. He has brought us back to our homeland, reconstituted our nationhood, and returned us to Zion-to God's chosen place in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. Over the last 75 years and especially in the 15 months since Oct 7, God has shown us countless miracles. The many enemies that surrounded us with a ring of fire have crumbled one after another, and the Jews in Israel have discovered that we're a nation crowded with incredibly heroic human beings.

God is inviting the Jewish people to take our place with Him so that the Shechinah can return and the whole world can be filled with love and joy and a desire to connect to one another and to our Maker.

Many Jews have rejected the concept of chosenness as chauvinistic and as an obstacle to meaningful and deep relationships with non-Jews. In fact, our chosenness is just the opposite. It's the gateway to a deeper relationship with non-Jews, with each other and with God. 

By embracing our identity as God's chosen people, we empower ourselves to be heroes in the story of Man and help bring us together as one beautiful blue globe in God's vast universe.