Taking Jewish Distinctiveness Seriously Again

For many Jews, the idea of the Jewish people as the “Chosen People” is deeply uncomfortable. It sounds like superiority, exclusion, or moral arrogance.

So if it comes up at all, it’s often immediately deflected:
“It doesn’t mean we’re better than anyone else.” “It doesn’t really mean chosen.”
“It just means Abraham chose God.”

And yet, the idea persists — not only in Jewish texts, but in Jewish history.

Every time Jews make a blessing on the Torah, they thank God for choosing them from among the nations. Not as a slogan, and not as a boast, but as a description of a relationship — a covenant that shaped a people and gave them a distinctive way of living in the world.

What does this idea of being chosen really mean?

To be chosen never meant comfort or privilege. It meant responsibility and obligation. It meant living within a demanding moral and legal framework that governed every aspect of life — from commerce and family to justice and time itself. Jewish distinctiveness was not theoretical; it was practiced, carried, argued over, and often paid for dearly.

This identity survived exile, persecution, dispersion, and powerlessness because it was portable. A people could lose land, kings, armies, and still remain intact if their identity was anchored in law, memory, and mission.

The rupture came with the Enlightenment.

As Jews entered European society, emancipation came with a price: to be accepted, Jews had to stop thinking of themselves as a distinct nation with a unique mission and start thinking of themselves as a religious subgroup within someone else’s civilization.

Chosenness became an embarrassment. Nationhood became dangerous. Particularism became suspect.

So Jews began explaining themselves away — to others and eventually to themselves.

The World Never Forgot Who We Are — Even When We Did.

While many Jews stopped believing in chosenness, the world never did.

Christianity and Islam — the two largest religions on earth — are both built on the premise that God chose the Jewish people. They disagree on what happened afterward, but the starting point is shared: Abraham and his descendants were chosen to enter an everlasting covenant with God.

Antisemites also never doubted Jewish distinctiveness. No one persecutes a people for being ordinary.

The Jewish people — small in number and scattered across the globe — have remained unusually visible, influential, and contested. No one obsesses over a people who do not matter. The attention, admiration, resentment, and hostility directed toward Jews has always far exceeded their size. That obsession is the shadow side of significance.

History keeps sending the same message, even when Jews refuse to read it: You are not just another people.

Chosenness Is Not Superiority — It Is Assignment

The central misunderstanding of chosenness is the belief that it means being better than others.

It never did.

Chosenness means being tasked.

It means being assigned a role in the moral development of humanity — to introduce ideas that were once revolutionary and are now taken for granted: the sanctity of human life, the dignity of the individual, the idea that power is morally accountable, that time itself can be sanctified, that law stands above kings.

These ideas did not emerge spontaneously. They were carried, argued for, lived, and often paid for dearly by a people who believed their national existence had meaning beyond survival.

Why This Matters Now

We are living through a moment when antisemitism is no longer whispered but shouted. When Jews are murdered for gathering as Jews. When Israel is singled out obsessively. Jews are again being reminded that invisibility is not an option.

At moments like this, assimilation does not protect us. Silence does not protect us. Apology does not protect us.

What has always protected the Jewish people is clarity of identity. Strength does not come from denying who we are. It comes from embracing it.

Re-engaging with the idea of chosenness does not require instant belief or religious transformation. It begins with something quieter: the willingness to take Jewish identity seriously again — not as a source of embarrassment, but as a source of responsibility.

Today, Jews need to stand taller as Jews, louder, and more united. Taking Judaism seriously means taking that next step, whatever it may be for you, toward the responsibility that has always defined the Jewish nation.