The Chosen People

In one of the most memorable lines from Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye the Milkman turns toward heaven and says, “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”

The truth is that Tevye gives voice to what many Jews are feeling these days amid the rising tide of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. We are uncomfortable with the idea of being chosen. And if we are, in fact, “the Chosen People,” why does our history seem to be an unbroken chain of destruction, exile, inquisitions, expulsions, pogroms, genocide, antisemitism, and war?

Despite those reservations, one of the first prayers we expect our young people to master as they prepare to become B Mitzvah is the blessing over the Torah. It is a prayer steeped in the language of chosenness. We praise God as “asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim—Who has chosen us from among all the nations.”

The Reconstructionist Movement revised the wording of this blessing to praise God for bringing us closer to the tradition, rather than for choosing us. That change only becomes necessary, however, if chosenness is understood to mean that Jews are somehow inherently better than everyone else simply by virtue of birth—or even by choosing to join the Jewish people.

But is that really what chosenness means?

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses offers a very different understanding. He tells the Israelites: “Know, then, that it is not because of your virtue that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess; for you are a stiff-necked people.” (Deuteronomy 9:6)

In other words, our ancestors were not chosen because they were wiser, kinder, more righteous, or more deserving than anyone else. God did not choose them because they were extraordinary. If anything, God chose them despite their flaws.

God chose us to show the world that the Torah – God’s ways – can lift anyone up to become a moral exemplar for the rest of the world.

It is not who we are that makes us God’s people; it is what we do. Chosenness is not a status to be claimed but a calling to be lived. And anyone who chooses to embrace God’s ways can answer that calling.

So whenever I recite the Torah blessings or hear the phrase “the Chosen People,” I do not think primarily about being chosen by God. I think about how I have chosen to place God and Torah at the center of my life. In that sense, chosenness is not simply something we inherit. It is something we choose.

Perhaps that is what it really means: we become the chosen people each time we choose to bring a piece of the tradition into our lives.

Shalom, RAF.