by Ari Averbach, student of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
We struggle with the idea of “chosenness”. What does it mean that God chose us? Are we better or more worthy than other nations? Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan sought to reconstruct Judaism by (among other ideas) removing the pillar of chosenness. The movement that followed him changed the liturgy of Havdalah and the Torah service that allude to God having chosen Abraham and his descendents.
Jews have grappled with chosenness since the beginning. In Tanakh, in the Mishnah, in midrash, across centuries and hemispheres. Pesikta De-Rav Kahana, an exegetical text from fifth or sixth century Palestine, looks at the special Torah portion we are reading this Saturday for Shabbat HaChodesh and is clearly troubled by this concept. It lists four rabbis who agree (how rare!) that when the Torah says, “I have set you apart from other peoples” it does not mean “I have elevated you above all other peoples.” Rabbi Levi explains that this distinction is in relation to plowing, seeding, harvesting, making sheaths, threshing, wine making, gathering as a community, and accounting. Everything listed is a mundane activity, a part of daily life for the farmers of Eretz Israel fifteen hundred years ago. Rabbi Levi then brings in lines from the Torah to support each point, showing that our treatment of animals, how we treat each other, and how we see the world are the reasons we have been chosen. By doing ordinary activities in an extraordinary way, our lives can be made holy. In fact, they are holiness.
We are still Jews, so we do not put away our history and tradition, our study and prayer. But we add them to a life of meaning. Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks teaches, “In Judaism, faith is not acceptance but protest, against the world that is, in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be… [The] impassioned, sustained desire [of Judaism] is to bring heaven down to earth. Until we have done this, there is work still to do.”
If true Judaism, the reason God chose us, is to elevate the routine, then start now. Take the most quotidian habit — walking — and give it purpose. Join friends, families, and other chosen people, and put one foot in front of the other with the intention to bring awareness to God’s world. Walk to End Genocide with Jewish World Watch. Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan’s student, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, expanded the concern of chosenness. “We Jews are not chosen but we are a choosing people.” As the Walk to End Genocide approaches, choose to be extraordinary. Choose to be chosen.