The Chosen

This week’s Torah Reading tells us that to be Equal is not the same as to be the Chosen! There are some people who are “Chosen.” They are an anomaly…why are they special?

We all are 99.1% identical, but the 0.1% is one big difference. In that small 0.1% is the difference of sex, male and female, tall and short, black and white, red and yellow, Caucasian and oriental, thin and heavy, genius and normal, chosen and non-chosen.

As with individuals, so with Peoples. There are Blacks from Africa, Orientals from the East, Tans from the South Seas, Reds from the Western Hemisphere, Eskimos from the far North.

But there is only one Chosen People! No other People can claim that distinction. Only one People were called by The Creator to be the Chosen People, the Kingdom of Priests, G-d’s Holy Treasure. No other People can or does claim that distinction!

The Choice is incongruous. Abba Eban said that Jews can’t take “yes” for an answer. As Dorothy Parker once observed: “How odd of G-d. He choose the Jews!”

We are clearly different than other people – but in good ways or bad ways? Unfortunately, we haven’t taken to Torah as we were intended to, as we were distinguished and selected to do.

We are fated with two ways, the Good and the Bad, what the Torah calls the Way of Life and the Way of Death.

G-d advises: “Choose Life,” and also warns us not to “Choose Death.”

G-d does not mean literally life or death physically, but Life or Death as a People.

In the beginning, only one small family was chosen to carry the Torah, as we find in this week’s Torah Reading – the children of Jacob, or as G-d renamed him, Israel – the youngest son of Isaac and Rebekah.

Essau was the older of the twins, and Isaac would have been expected to choose him as his heir. But G-d and Rebekah had other ideas.

They chose his younger brother, Jacob – literal “Heel” because Jacob, the youngest twin was born holding on the heel of the first-born twin, Essau.

Why did Rebekah go against Tradition? Because G-d had told her that, while she would have twins, the “older shall serve the younger!” (Gen. 25.23).

Just as Abraham had pleaded with G-d for his earlier-born Ishmael. So Isaac favored his earlier born Essau to be his spiritual heir (Gen. 17.18).

Ishmael was not to be ignored by G-d, and would become a “Great Nation.” But only through Sarah, was G-d’s Choice to be manifest, as the Mother of the Chosen People, The Jewish People! (Gen. 17.19).

But Sarah’s son Isaac had twin sons, and G-d told Rebekah that the younger, Jacob, was to be the Chosen, and Rebekah, who loved both twin sons, still followed the Divine Choice.

Rebekah engaged in deception to achieve G-d’s Choice, she disguised Jacob as Essau and Isaac was deceived, and gave him the Blessing of the First Born, and so were formed the Jewish People. (Gen. 27.1-40).

The Choice, however, was the Creator’s, not the mother’s. Rebekah knew that she was carrying out G-d’s Choice, and she went along with the Choice.

Isaac also, the commentators say, knew that he was being deceived by Rebekah and Jacob, but he let himself be deceived, so as not to offend Essau, his first born.

However, when Rebekah sent Jacob away, in order to protect him from Essau’s rage (Gen. 37.41) Isaac blessed Jacob and sent him away from Essau, to Abraham’s People, to take a wife from there (Gen. 28.2-5). Essau was not dumb, and he got the message, and took a daughter of Ishmael to wife (Gen. 2.8 7-9).

So what conclusion are we to draw from this complex “genesis” of the Jewish People? There is only one conclusion!

We are the Chosen People! We have been Chosen by the Creator of all humans, to be the Creator’s Holy Treasure, to be a Kingdom of Priests! What a distinction!

Do we comport ourselves as such? Are we, in each generation, cognizant of the duties and responsibilities by being The Chosen People…G-d’s Chosen Treasure, G-d’s Kingdom of Priests?

If we examine our actions each day in that light, we will surely act like The Chosen! People will say: “They are unique! They are Blessed. They are Different! They are a Kingdom of Priests, a Holy People, G-d’s Treasure!! Let us admire them – let us copy them” – for that is what is meant by the Chosen People?

© 2007 L.N.S.