Chosen For Their Insignificance, Not Their Superiority

10 min readMar 25, 2024

The Accusation Jewish People Think They Are Better Than Everyone Else Because They Are “Chosen”

Many people trying to slander Israel will slyly imply that the Zionist motivation is racist because Jewish people think they are superior to everyone else, and this accusation will be supported by pointing out the Jewish religion claims Jews are God’s “chosen people”.

While being Jewish is both an ethnicity and a religion, meaning many Jewish people are not particularly religious, it is true that the religion of Judaism teaches that Jews were God’s “chosen” people. What does this actually mean? Does it mean Jews think they are better than other people?

Jewish children are taught we were “chosen” to receive God’s law, in the form of the Ten Commandments and other laws in what Christians call the “Old Testament”. We are taught the reason God made this choice is just the opposite of the ancient Hebrews being superior. The Hebrew people, we are taught, were the least and most insignificant people He could have chosen. We are and were minor and unremarkable. The idea is if God could work his will through this small band of unworthy and insignificant people, the world would know it was really God speaking to humanity through them and nothing else.

This theme of God choosing the most insignificant is a classically repeated theme throughout the bible. Abraham was a shepherd. Moses was born a slave and then cast out from Egypt. Moses stammered and needed his brother Aaron to speak for him. David was a shepherd. Jesus was a refugee and a carpenter.

The idea is always supposed to be that God does not want people hearing His message or seeing His works to get confused about authorship. In no case should anyone be so impressed with the humans He works through that they might think the acts He performs or wisdom He shares is really coming from them rather than Him, so he always chooses someone of a lowly station and limited ability as the vessel of His will.

No Jew who understands the Jewish tradition wakes up and thinks they are superior for being Jewish. From the time we are small children, our tradition teaches us exactly the opposite and claiming otherwise is an old anti-Semitic slander. While there are certainly arrogant or egotistical Jewish people, just like there are in any large group, these are flawed individuals and it is not taught or liked by the Jewish religion or culture any more than it is in other religions or cultures.

What Is Jewishness?

Jewishness is not a race or a religion or a tribe or an ethnicity. It is difficult for Western people to understand and categorize because all those categories are products of Western civilization, and the Jewish people’s self-invention pre-dates the invention of Western civilization by almost 2,000 years ( much less the invention of those categories ). There is no word in Western languages for what being a Jew is, which makes it difficult to describe and understand.

I am not saying this to “mystify” it, and in fact I am going to describe precisely what I think Jewishness is. But to do it, I am going to have to do it in parts, incorporating aspects of several different concepts to point the way. The first part of my answer will be mostly metaphor, and then I will repeat in more literal language.

As metaphor: Being a Jew is a family relation, with a religion attached. The religion is like the family business. Most of the family is involved in the business but it is optional. Some family members strike out on their own, but they are still part of the family if they continue to love the family, visit it and are loyal to its heritage and values. The family business has many business units that make different products for different market segments, but they are all under the same brand. The business units themselves are not all consistent in what they tell their employees and customers, and this causes some petty rivalry. Some of them really resent the impact they think some of the others have on the brand, but they are all variations of the same brand business.

The mission statement of the family business is: Heal the world. It is an interpretation of an order given by the Chairman of the Board to the original founders, which was, “Be a light unto the nations”. As a result, members of the family business tend towards idealistic politics and charity.

Just like with individuals, some branches of the family may dislike or lose touch with some other members of the family, but they are still family. What happens to any member of the family happens to all of the family. We know we are family because twelve brothers from one father all came together and created the family business, and gave a role to anyone who wanted one.

The family and the family business both have held together for 3,500 years because of its connection to the land of its origin. Some of the family has always been there, through good times and bad, even as other parts of the family sought greener pastures, and we have always regularly called back home and visited. The family history doesn’t take place in a random location, and the family values do not issue from a series of events in random places, and the family traditions were built to revolve around the agriculture and the seasons, adventures and misadventures, of a specific place. You can call it Zion (or Jerusalem) at its center.

Mostly, the family grows by marriage and by having babies or adopting babies ( I was adopted ). The family gets to say who is and is not going to be part of the family. The family doesn’t really go out looking for people to bring in. But people can apply to be part of the family business and if they are willing to devote themselves to the family and to its business, after some rigorous testing, we will hire. Healing the world is a tough business with a lot of blowback, and it isn’t for everybody. Oy vey, is it tough. Why do you think so many people have quit?

This explains why Israel will do things like give up 1,000 Palestinian murderers, including a top Hamas leader like Sinwar, to get back one mid-level soldier like Gilad Shalit. He wasn’t just a soldier, he was family. What would you do to get him back, if someone in your family was kidnapped? It also explains why Israel goes berserk when people are murdered and kidnapped. That was our family.

Leaving the family is murkier. It can be done but the family is so small, it doesn’t want to turn its back on people. As a coping strategy, the family makes it easy to leave but also stays quiet about it and makes it easy to come back. If you leave the family business and renounce ( or become indifferent to ) your family ties, the family heritage and history, you aren’t really part of the family anymore. But if you later regret your choice, you will be embraced and we will pretend it never happened. The point where everyone really knows you’ve left is when we can see how you are raising your children. If you raise your children to be proud and knowledgeable about the family traditions and family heritage, and to attend the family events, we know you haven’t really left. If you don’t do this, you are no longer family.

So Jewishness is exclusive in a certain sense, but not at all because Jewish people think they are superior. Your family is exclusive too, but ( hopefully ) it’s not exclusive because it thinks it is better than other families. It is just that your family has its way of doing things and other families have their ways of doing things, and they’re different, and that’s all fine.

Not everyone who says they want to be part of your family can be, but that’s just because exclusivity is a healthy thing which is built into the idea of being a family. It is not a philosophy of superiority over other families. In fact, if you reflect on it, you probably admire other families too and see things in those families you think are better than your own. But, still, your family is your family.

That leaves mostly the question of the relationship between Jewishness and the belief, right or wrong, that your heritage is that of the Hebrew people who are indigenous to historic Canaan, part of the Levant.

I have to say, Jewish practice just flat out rejects the idea that a person becomes Jewish simply through adopting customs and practices. If this were true, Madonna could claim to be Jewish ( she’s not ). This is what I will call in the next chapter on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, ‘Reducing Jewishness to food and comedy’. In writings and commentary, it feels to me many non-Jews try to impose on Jews the view I would call reductive in that essay.

The key thing is Jews are a tribal community and to be in it, you have to be Hebrew. To be Jewish requires a mutual recognition: The individual wanting to be Jewish must claim membership in the community, and the community in return must recognize the individual’s claim. It has worked this way for thousands of years, because Jewish identity works on tribal principles, not libertarian principles. An individual can’t just “identify as Jewish” and actually be Jewish. It is something like the way American Indians determine membership using things like the Dawes Rolls.

You cannot be Cherokee just because you act like a Cherokee and want to be a Cherokee. Similarly, you cannot be Jewish simply because you “identify as Jewish”.

Now, it can be confusing because Jewishness is not racial. Since people can enter the community through a limited number of non-genetic routes, there is nothing like a Dawes Roll to mediate group membership. What it takes is either descent ( traditionally through the mother but not necessarily ) or adoption or conversion.

In some “modern” reform communities, it can happen ( controversially ) implicitly by a marriage, but not in all communities.

For myself, I am adopted. My birth family is Irish Catholic. I do not have a Hebrew strand of DNA in my body, but I am 100% Jewish because I was accepted by the community as a baby, through ritualized acceptance, including both a ritualized bath similar to baptism and by circumcision, was raised in the traditions, educated in the mythology, and then I reciprocally returned the acceptance of my community at my Bar Mitzvah and have stayed true to my promises to love and be part of the community and honor my Hebrew heritage. Yes, my Hebrew heritage, because Hebrew heritage is not a thing of molecular genetics but a thing of culture, religion, tradition and history, and it can be inherited non-genetically.

These are sacred, deep connections which cannot be reduced to mere custom and certainly cannot be reduced to mere genetics, which would be anti-spiritual and absolutely disgusting. Only racists think of Jewishness as a kind of blood purity.

Why? Entry by adoption, conversion or marriage critically requires accepting not just customs but also sincerity of belief, and having your sincerity and practice reciprocally recognized by the community. For example, conversion is a religious acceptance into the covenant, and requires tests of both belief in the covenant and sincerity of belief in the value of Hebrew history and heritage. Marriage acceptance requires acceptance of belief in your partner’s heritage, which is a Hebrew heritage, and a sincere willingness to endorse the importance of this heritage, to live this heritage and teach it to your children.

These aspects of belief, sincerity and community acceptance have been integral to Jewish unity and survival through 2000 years of diaspora and for 1500 years before that. They cannot be shorn away, which is why no one can simply become Jewish by eating bagels, wearing a kippah, and lighting shabbat candles, independent of actual beliefs or tribal acceptance. With respect to what I have read most people describe as Jewishness, I believe what they describe is just a Potemkin Jewishness.

I would reiterate, I believe what I am saying about Jewishness is deep rather than reductive. The closest English language mash-up I can use to express what Jewishness is would be to call it an ethno-religion, though even “ethnicity” doesn’t quite get at it like it should. But in my essay on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, I use ethnicity as a stand-in as the closest thing English has to the kind of extended family relationship that Jewishness is.

The best way to understand how things have gone so badly is to read the chapters of this resource in order, from beginning to end, clicking on the Go deeper links as your time allows. It is an immersive experience and few people will get through unchanged, having learned the context of the conflict, including parts the United Nations does not want people to learn.

This essay is part of a larger resource for parents, teachers, students, concerned individuals, and anyone else who desires to contextualize the conflict and navigate the accusations against Israel and Palestinians.

All Chapters:

0. Foreword to Zionism and Anti-Zionism

1. The Gish Gallop of Anti-Zionism

2. Genocide or Just War?

3. For Hamas, The Suffering Is The Point

4. What Is Israel? Why So Much Violence?

5. The Hebrew People, Not the Jewish Religion

6. Chosen For Their Insignificance, Not Their Superiority

7. The Incoherence of, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionism.”

8. Refugee Immigration, Not Settler Colonialism

9. Zionism, Arab Feudalism, and the Tragedy of the Serfs

10. How the Zionists Saved ( Not Conquered ) Palestine