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The Concept of Chosen People in the Construction and Maintenance of Jewish Identity

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The Concept of Chosen People in the Construction and Maintenance of Jewish Identity HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies ISSN: (Online) 2072-8050, (Print) 0259-9422 Page 1 of 8 Original Research The concept of chosen people in the construction and maintenance of Jewish identity Author: Jews, as a group, are able to withstand the disintegrative forces of modernity by upholding 1 brimadevi van Niekerk certain notions of self-identification which are rooted in their ancestral and religious history. Affiliation: One such notion around which Jews have formed their identity is the concept of chosen people 1Department of Christian which lends credence to their sense of belonging. However, the concept of chosenness may be Spirituality, Church History, offensive to those who are not Jews. The aim of this article, therefore, is to examine what may and Missiology, University of be considered objectionable about the concept, to explain its persistence in the world and to South Africa, South Africa explore the foundations on which Jews, a minority group of people, have formed their identity. Corresponding author: Although many researchers now understand the concept of chosen people from the perspective brimadevi van Niekerk, of history, nations and nationalisms, ethnicities and myth, there has been little sustained [email protected] critique in the religious dimension of identity. This article attempts to make a contribution to Dates: the work on religious identity of Jews in South Africa by drawing on literature in history, Received: 26 Feb. 2018 sociology and religion. The article concludes that chosenness, because it can be as onerous to Accepted: 07 June 2018 Jews as it is beneficial, need not necessarily imply superiority and that claims to being chosen Published: 04 Oct. 2018 are rhetorical and not verifiable outside the discourse in which such claims are made. How to cite this article: Van Niekerk, b., 2018, ‘The concept of chosen people in Introduction the construction and maintenance of Jewish For many years now, since I have been teaching introductory courses to Judaism at the University of identity’,HTS Teologiese Johannesburg, I always get a similar response from students in the first lecture on the overview of Studies/Theological Studies Jewish history and, in particular, when the notion of covenant and chosen people is discussed. This 74(3), a4947. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v74i3.4947 concept is always problematic and students protest disapprovingly at the idea of Jews being called the chosen people.1 What is it that students find prickly or offensive about this concept? How does Copyright: an ancient idea still find contextual relevance for Jews today who are in the South African diaspora © 2018. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work where religious traditions of myth are not enough and no longer agree with the contemporary is licensed under the scene? The aim, therefore, of this article is to examine the foundations on which Jews have formed Creative Commons their identity around the concept of chosen people and to explain its persistence in the world despite Attribution License. the effects of modernity; how is it possible when boundaries in the world have become so fluid and porous, when technologies, mass electronic communications, goods, services and the flow of people across the world increase in speed and ease, that Jews are able to withstand the effects of the modern world by maintaining and preserving an antique idea such as chosen people? Literature review In the literature on chosen people, there appears to be several works written from the perspective of history (Gitlin & Leibovitz 2010; Gürkan 2009), nations and nationalisms (Smith 2003), theology (Novak 1995), myth (Allegro 1971; Leeming 2004) and other works from the point of view of religious diversity who offer a pluralist model (Knitter 2005; Kogan 2005). In their book, The Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election, Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz show what effects of the concept of chosenness can have on those who believe in the idea. Writing predominately about the concept of chosenness among the Jews, they trace how the concept develops in diaspora, leading to Zionism and the present dilemma of Israel and Palestine, with the American notion of chosenness having its inception with the colonial settlers and their attitudes to the autochthon inhabitants, following with US support of the state of Israel. ‘At its core’, they argue: Read online: the immensely influential Hebrew Bible is a story of a people who believe themselves to have been chosen Scan this QR by God – chosen, moreover, to live in a particular land. The notion of being chosen, whether a gift or a code with your smart phone or 1.It is perhaps important to mention that these students in the anecdote were born in post-apartheid South Africa, and though many mobile device would have already attended mixed schools, the stories from their parents’ generation about exclusion and separation on the basis of to read online. racial superiority must surely play a part in their present worldviews and the formation of their identities. Most of the students profess to be Christians, with a small number of Muslims and Hindus, and a few who proclaim no religion. http://www.hts.org.za Open Access Page 2 of 8 Original Research burden, is what fashioned them into a people, revived them in tricky and provocative term’ and it cannot be denied. Some exile, demanded interpretation, and repeatedly plunged them historians have stated that it was the Jews, together with the into danger seemingly from the beginning of recorded time. Greeks, who were responsible for creating the concept and (Gitlin & Liebovitz 2010:1) who themselves portrayed the first type of the phenomenon of nation: However, the concept of chosenness seems to perplex Israelis, Americans and especially Westerners, who are educated and That, of course, is not the whole of the – and their – story. That the religion and culture (high as well as low) of the Jews were secular and find it unreasonable to ‘credit a biblical notion for intimately and inextricably bound up with their nationhood over the birth of nations’ (Gitlin & Liebovitz 2010:191–192). They very many centuries is beyond question. What can be seriously, argue that the issue of chosenness: if somewhat fruitlessly, debated is only the subsidiary question would seem best left to the true believers, the zealous minority whether their ancient faith should be seen primarily as the whom in both countries, have fashioned theologies of divine instrument of their national preservation, or contrariwise, election into agendas of narrowness and aggression. But it would whether it is their people hood that should be seen as the means be naive to think that either Americans or Israelites can walk whereby their religion was defended and preserved, and not away from the extraordinary, entrancing, ancient, deep and – in without success, against, successive, near fatal onslaughts by so many ways – odd idea that we, or began as, God’s chosen pagan, Christian, and Muslim rivals. (pp. 398–399) people. (Gitlin & Liebovitz 2010:192) Vital (2001:398–399), of course, is concerned about the Gürkan (2009:185–186), too, has attempted to understand the persistence of the Jews as a separate and distinct group of nature of the Jewish insistence on ‘chosenness’ and the people. He is not optimistic. ‘Where’, he says: interaction between the idea of chosenness and the shape of there was once a single, if certainly a scattered and far from Jewish religion and Jewish identity. Gürkan (2009:185–186) monolithic people – indeed, a nation – there is now a sort of has showed that the idea of chosenness is an essential element archipelago of discrete islands composed of rather shaky in Jewish theology and Jewish memory forming an important communities of all qualities, shapes, and sizes, in which the constituent of Jewish identity, which has been interpreted in Island of Israel, as it were is fated increasingly to be in a class by divergent ways, not only in different Jewish movements or itself. (p. 399) congregations but also in different epochs. What has been common to all those various Jewish interpretations of Novak (1995:xi) takes on the fundamental question of what it chosenness, however, is a sense of ‘uniqueness’, as coupled means to be a Jew and addresses it more globally to include most of the time with a feeling of ‘superiority’ (Gürkan all Jews in the world together with the question of what it 2009:185–186). means to be chosen by God. Novak approaches his subject matter by examining the theology of election in the light of Anthony D. Smith (2003) advances the idea that ethnicity, post-Enlightenment theory; the question of who did the commonality, economic interest, political stability and choosing: was it God or Israel, and relating this to the modern language cannot explain the persistence of national identity. rejection of revelation; and can non-Jews be part of the elect Only long-standing religious symbols and rituals can account people? It is the question as to whether or not non-Jews can for the endurance of religious collectives. For Smith, national be part of the elect people which is the concern of this article. identity operates as ‘a form of culture and a type of belief- The very fact that Novak refers to those who are not in a system whose object is the nation conceived as a sacred covenantal relationship with the God of Israel as non-Jews communion’ (Smith 2003:18). Drawing on Émile Durkheim’s already points to a discriminatory view of others. Like the (1915) functional definition of religion, Smith views the term ‘non-European’ in apartheid, which defined the identity distinction between the sacred and the profane as elements of people by what they are not – that is, in the negative – and that undergird national culture.
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