Chosenness and Normality

In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 156a/b, the rabbis indulge in speculation about the effect of astrology on a person’s character and fate. R. Hanina goes so far as to say that the Jewish people has a guiding constellation. But that statement is quickly countered by numerous rabbis affirming that “there is no constellation for the Jewish people.” More than a millennium later, in the 1500s, Rabbi Judah Low of Prague (known as the Maharal) explained the importance of this debate. He presented astrology as an aspect of natural law, to which all nations are subject save for the Jewish people. The fate of the Jews, according to the Maharal, is determined directly by God. The law of the rise and inevitable fall of nations do not apply to them.

Do Jews believe this today? Some do. So do many non-Jews. And you don’t have to be religious to think this way -- that everything about the Jews, including both their survival across time and the horrific persecutions they have endured, is distinct. Whether coming from Jews or Gentiles, religious or secular, loving or hostile, this view insists on Jewish uniqueness. The passion that the state of Israel evokes stems largely from people seeing it as unique and not as just another country in a flawed and violent world.

For almost three hundred years, since Jews began to experience emancipation and social integration, they have tried to square these opportunities with traditional ideas about Jewish uniqueness. In our own day this question is more important than ever. What do Jews have in common with other minorities? How is antisemitism similar to racism, and how is it different?

Should we view the state of Israel as a product of the same forces and the same limits that shape other states?

These aren’t simple questions. People won’t agree about how to answer them or the ramifications of those answers. But they must be asked, and although debating them could be a source of division, they can also bring us together out of common concern and ahavat Yisrael.