Jewish Matters No. 1

As promised earlier, here is the first of a 6-part series from "Jewish Matters" by Doron Kornbluth.





Our People
The Chosen People
Natan Lopes Cardozo

NATAN LOPES CARDOZO heads the Cardozo School for Jewish Studies and Human Dignity, a school without walls that educates young rabbis, teachers, academicians, and laypeople how to become effective ambassadors for Judaism. He is a world-renowned lecturer, known for his most original and unique insights into Judaism, through which he helps many people, Jews and non-Jews, realize the relevance of Judaism for our complicated times. He received his rabbinical degree from Gateshead Talmudic College and his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia Pacific University. He is the author of The Torah as God’s Mind (Bepron Publications), Between Silence and Speech (Jason Aronson Publications), The Infinite Chain (Targum Press), and The Written and Oral Torah (Jason Aronson).

The Chosen Claim
One of the most disturbing claims ever made by any group of people is the one Jews make when, quoting the Bible, they insist on being the “Chosen People.” For nearly four thousand years, Jews have upheld the belief that they are God’s elect, the “apple of His eye,” His most beloved and favored nation. Superficially, this claim sounds like prejudice of the highest order, making the vast majority of mankind into second-class citizens.
Aside from Biblical references, the Jewish tradition itself has emphasized Jewish particularity and the need to build thicker walls between Jews and non-Jews. Jews are not to marry non-Jews. Judaism does not missionize or go out to win converts; rather it discourages all but the most sincere. Kosher-food laws themselves limit social interaction. Even when living amidst their non-Jewish neighbors, Jews have also always striven to live on their own, dressing differently, speaking their own language, and abiding by their own unique customs, prayers, and culture.
The famous English author George Bernard Shaw accused the Jews of arrogance and said that as long as they insisted upon their chosenness they had no right to object to the monstrous way the Germans had killed six million of their people — they had brought it on themselves. H. G. Wells called the Jewish claim “a hindrance to world unity.” Protestant theologians spoke about the “haughtiness of Jewish belief.”

The Universalist Claim
With all this said, it may strike us as paradoxical that traditional Judaism has gone out of its way to stress the dignity of the entire human race. When reading the Creation chapter (long before the Jews were created), we are told that all men were created in the image of God (Genesis, ch. 1). The prophet’s words are clear: “Have we not all one Father; has not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). In Talmudic times, Rabbi Meir stated that Adam was created from dust that had been collected from all corners of the earth so that no one nation could claim the distinction of being better or having created mankind.
While not encouraging conversion, Judaism does insist that all people can become Jews. Some of the greatest Jews in history were converts or descendants of converts: The great king David comes from the line of Ruth, perhaps our most famous convert (see the Book of Ruth). Rabbi Akiva, Shemayah, and Avtalyon, some of the greatest Sages in our tradition, all traced themselves to converted forefathers. The famous commentator and Sage Onkelos was the Roman Emperor’s nephew when he converted.

The Paradox
We are thus confronted with a most amazing situation. On the one hand, we have observed how much Judaism wants to secure the Jewish people’s uniqueness and chosenness. On the other hand, we are told that the equality of all men, the dignity of all human beings, is the cornerstone upon which all traditional Judaism stands.

Reality
Before trying to address this paradox, we must ask an important question: Does historical reality confirm the unique status of the Jewish people, and even its chosenness?
Our answer must be stated clearly: Yes. The cold historical facts prove that the Jewish people stand out in three matters:
1. They experienced a most miraculous survival.
2. They have made incredible contributions to civilization, totally out of proportion with their numbers.
3. They made a totally unprecedented return to their homeland after nearly two thousand years of exile.

1. Their Survival
In Biblical times, the Jews were surrounded by enemies who were committed to destroy them. They had to wage war after war to survive. Afterward they were sent into their longest exile. Beaten, killed, tortured, they were expelled from one country to another, only to find another disaster awaiting them. They became the scapegoat for national and social problems. Still, they survived. Discriminated against, consistently outlawed, the oldest nation on the planet, the Jews were constantly dying . . . yet never died. Outlasting all their enemies, they violated all the sophisticated rules of history, and for this reason became either the most annoying or the most celebrated people of the world.

2. Their Contributions
The Jewish people brought monotheism to the world, the most powerful idea man has ever heard. Since that day the universe has never been the same. The gift of the Bible turned all deeds into moral actions, teaching ethics and justice. Neither Christianity nor Islam would exist without the Jews. Based on “the Book,” no international or American law would be what it is today without them. In later centuries Jews contributed to science, literature, music, finance, medicine, and art — all beyond anyone’s expectations of a small, tortured people. They were involved in many social revolutions, often becoming the leaders and thinkers. They have produced great rabbis and sages, and even those who were on the road to assimilation revolutionized the world: Spinoza, Freud, Einstein, Marx.

3. The Return
Not only did the Jews manage to survive in the face of all their sufferings and make great contributions to the world, but they even managed to free themselves of their nearly two-thousand-year exile to return to the land of their forefathers. Just moments after they had experienced their worst destruction, the Holocaust, Jews picked up their bags and “went home.” At a time when the whole world declared that there was no longer a future for the Jew, the State of Israel appeared — as if from nowhere. The Jewish return to their homeland was a totally unprecedented event; no nation after such a long, painful exile has successfully returned to its homeland and built a completely modern state. It is a phenomenon totally unheard of, violating all principles of conformity.

The First Jew
Having observed all this, we may confidently state that the Jews are indeed “a nation apart.” Their uniqueness is beyond question, but we must ask, Does this have anything to do with the Biblical claim of chosenness? To answer this, we must turn to the Bible itself, in Genesis, chapter 11.
The generation of the Tower of Babel represented a low point in human history. They sought to build a tower high enough to reach the heavens and challenge God. For the first time, a whole generation stood up and rebelled against God as a matter of principle. While earlier generations had done much evil, they understood their actions were evil. The Tower’s generation, however, brought a new ideology into the world, one of extreme secularism in which God was deliberately ignored. This new belief system saw nothing wrong with immorality — it elevated it to the new world order.
Abraham understood the inherent dangers of an ideology in which God was exiled and where immorality, corruption, and sexual depravity became the norm. He became known in the world as “Avraham the Ivri” (the Hebrew). Ivri conveys the idea of crossing a road, standing on the other side. The Jewish tradition explains: “The whole world stands on one side, and Abraham on the other.” Abraham taught the world exactly what it did not want to hear: the most important thing in life is not what one has but what one is. He asked people to do that “which is just and right” (Genesis 18:19), to move toward their spiritual potential. This became the great mission of his life, of the life of his partner, Sarah, and of all his descendants.
All moral revolutions are based on this first one.
The nation that was in the process of being built was to become the guilty conscience of the world. As Jacques Maritain remarked, “The Jews gave the world no peace, they bar slumber, they teach the world to be discontented and restless as long as the world has no God.” The famous medieval commentator Seforno noted (on Exodus 19) that Abraham called for a “kingdom of priests” charged with the task of instructing and teaching the whole of mankind of the centrality of God and the importance of kindness and giving.
We can now understand more clearly our original question concerning the paradox between chosenness and universalism. The chosenness of the Jews is not a superiority-based selection at all, like that of the Nazis, who believed they were to be served by the rest of mankind. The Jews understand themselves to be the servants of mankind: a chosen messenger with a universalist message.
The particularistic aspects of the Jewish people help ensure that there will be strong messengers generation after generation. Without strong messengers there can be no strong message. Yet the goal is universal. Jews are moral protesters who understand their task as bringing the great ethical teachings of pure ethical monotheism to the entire world.