One of the MOST misrepresented things about Jews - and many who don't think they're antisemitic still fall for it, too.

Jews *rarely* ever refer to a term of "chosen people", and primarily because in the common vernacular that term has come to mean to non Jews something antithetical to the traditional and original Jewish concept.  Chosen for a specific purpose does not exclude anyone else from having their own purpose. 

It is a bigoted canard to turn the Torah’s foundational concept in Genesis that all humans are equal before God, equal in accountability, judgement, and blessing, and equally able to directly know and connect to God into a topsy turvy idea that violates the Torah to lie that Judaism teaches some form of supremacist notion.

Judaism teaches that Jews are chosen by God for the *purposes of the covenant between God and Israel, because Avraham and the patriarchs CHOSE God*. 

The Torah’s reference to Israel as a chosen people does not imply that God is exclusive to Jews or that Jews are or believe we are better than everyone else. The Jewish covenant nation people that follow Judaism are people who still choose to follow the eternal* covenant* made between God and Yisrael.  Torah has also shown that anyone that chooses to take on these obligations to formally join the nation can do so, too.

When some Christians insist upon telling us and the entire world the lie that Jews believe we're elevated above others with some exclusive right to God, this is most often PROJECTION of what the insulter believes about themselves. 

A root source of this is the replacement theology of Christianity that decided to redefine the meaning of chosen, to claim that only those who adhere to their dogma are the people who have God's exclusive blessing.  Their doctrine teaches them that only those who believe the way they do can connect to God or merit either blessing or atonement as well as achieve their notion of "salvation".  
Then they profess that they have “replaced” the Jews as God’s chosen people.   What all that think that way fail to recognize is that they are not replacing Jews, they've replaced the definition of the *term* with an anti-Torah concept irrelevant to Jews.  Then you've got the secular or atheist or other non Jew that has simply come to accept that claim *about* the  term "chosen people" and reject what Judaism has to say about it.

The role of Israel as the "chosen people" of God, does not mean that God chooses Jews and not anyone else, nor could it mean that God chose to reject his eternal covenant and “choose” someone else.

Israel as a nation people was chosen for specific, eternal purposes that are outlined in the Torah.  It’s not up for redefinition by anyone else, but that doesn’t stop people from attempting to do it on a daily basis.  Non-Jewish groups display a sense of entitlement to do so, but they speak for their own  religion's views, they don't change what it means *TO* Jews.

Read Deuteronomy Chapter 7 and you’ll see. God didn’t choose the Israelites because of any superiority in numbers or power, but because of their allegiance in humility to the covenant God made with our forefather, Abraham when he chose God.

Jews have survived and outlived all who have set out to oppress or destroy us, not because of intelligence, wealth or even military or political power, but because of the refusal to assimilate out of existence, because we have remained determine to refuse to let others redefine us in order to preserve and defend the eternal covenant with God and our purpose to be a light unto the nations.

Gentiles are shown being blessed, meriting atonement and blessing, right in our Jewish Bible. The Christian concept that one has to believe in a particular dogma or suffer eternal damnation is foreign to Judaism and yet another antithetical to our purpose and Torah aspect of their replacement theology.

Gentiles prayed at both First and Second Temples, too. Isaiah teaches that the righteous of all nations merit blessing. Torah teaches that all humans are of equal worth. 

Belonging to the eternal covenant of Israel is a CHOICE. Jews that follow Judaism are the people who choose to follow the Torah, and God chose to make this eternal covenant with us. We have greater obligations placed upon us because of the choice to adhere to this covenant. 

***The covenant of Israel in no manner implies that other nation peoples or individuals are not capable of direct knowledge/connection to God. ***

The role of Israel is to be a light unto the nations, an example of a path that helps humans connect to God and to one another as children of God. All humans are equal in accountability, judgement and mercy before God according to the Torah.

BUT WHAT IS the purpose?  

  There are many passages in the Torah that will leap out at you to tell you if you read it in context.

 I’ll slightly paraphrase a few, including Micah the prophet’s summation:  Jews are given the obligation to live as a light unto others in striving to bring the world to a state of holiness through justice and mercy in humility in serving God alone as our deity. 

If you read the Tanakh without viewing it through the lens of a replacement theology redefining any aspect of it, it would reveals that the holy texts of Judaism never taught us that God is exclusive to the Jews. The texts show from Genesis forward that every human, Gentile or Jew has always and shall always be able to connect directly to God. Jews are obligated to remain exclusive to God, not vice versa.

A foundational principle of Jewish ethics originating in Genesis is called Tzelem Elohim – image of God – is that every human being is created in the image of God and must be treated accordingly.

Judaism also teaches a concept that one human being was created originally so that no one can say, "my father was greater than your father.‟ known as Adam Yachid – a single human being – teaches us that every human being is unique and inherently precious.

It certainly is NOT Judaism, the Torah, nor the concept “chosen people” in the context of the eternal covenant between Israel and God  that originated or taught the false claims that all others who do not adhere to Judaism are somehow worth less or are incapable of direct connection to the Divine.

Those false claims remain antithetical to the eternal covenant between God and Yisrael and the purpose of the covenant people to exist as a light unto the nations.

The replacement theologies of Christianity and Islam share redefined notions of “chosen people” and their claims of each replacing Israel remain irrelevant to the eternal covenant of Israel. It only has relevance to us in how their beliefs about us, inspire them to TREAT us as history has revealed to us.

"The Master Race" = Hiter's Aryan ideology of a superior race of beings to rule and lord over humanity  ( Godwin's law notwithstanding - this is the ultimate contradiction to the purpose of the "chosen people" )

"God's Chosen People" = Torah's notion of a covenant nation who took on a role of obligation to live ethically as an example to all nations and to better the world for all people in SERVICE TO others.

Difference..
 An antithetical to Torah notion of a superior race of humans who have an exclusive blessing from God imparts an attitude of superiority and entitlement that devalues the lives of all others permitting every form of atrocity and enables those behaviors to be justified as something of “divine providence”

The Torah belief all humans are equal before God and that one can choose to live that example imparts a desire to be of service to humanity

Jews are over-represented in every human endeavor of service to our fellow humans;  Philanthropy, Medicine, Humanitarian Aid, Civil Rights, Science and Technology to benefit humanity, Environmental concerns.   Jews as a covenant nation are to fulfill our purpose as a distinct nation from all others, striving to benefit the lives of all of us in honoring God's gift of life.  Jews are prominently working in such endeavors side by side with people who are of different covenants of faith, different beliefs in different entities they worship as deity, and those who have no deity, ….all humans who recognize that living as an example of how to honor life and make the world a better place for all living is not an easy choice to make.

The prohibitions for Jews to keep our ways different from the ways of the nations around us isn't a bigoted notion, but a recognition that so many customs and practices surrounding all these things in the ancient world were done to honor specific deities, rulers and precepts that contradict the lessons of how to live through the Torah's precepts of justice and mercy.


Nowhere in any Jewish writing or in Jewish ethics is there any connection between the notion of a "chosen" people related to superiority or exclusive blessing or connection to God. The false notion of Jews as a race, a non-Jewish redefinition of our identity to negate the Jews as a distinct eternal covenant nation people with a purpose that is still used to insult us remains irrelevant to us and contradicts the purpose of the eternal covenant.

Am Yisrael Chai