December 18, 2008
Each year, when I get to the Joseph story, I know Hanukka is on its way. But I like neither the historical story of the war nor the legendary miracle of the oil. Judaism is so unwarlike that the rabbis excluded the war story from the Bible; and even though they focused on the oil, miracles did not become mainstream Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism never gave up preaching the value of Torah study. We have very few warriors or miracle-makers in our pantheon of heroes, but lots of teachers and students. Our ideal at the Passover seder is “the wise child” who inquires after all the “laws, statutes, and ordinances” that God gave us. More than anything, we have wished our children wisdom, scholarship, learning.
Rabbinic commentary projects that aspiration onto the Joseph story, especially in this week’s claim that Jacob loved Joseph more than he did his other sons. The biblical explanation for Jacob’s favoritism is that Joseph was “a child of his old age.” But the rabbis will have none of that. In his official translation of the passage, Onkelos explains, “He was a wise child to him [Jacob].” With fine anachronism, the midrash pictures Joseph studying in a yeshiva and transmitting its lessons to his household.
Not that the reason for Jacob’s favoritism mattered in the end. The jealous brothers did Joseph in without inquiring after Jacob’s rationale. No wonder the rabbis warn us against favoring one child over another. “Look what happened to Joseph,” they admonish.
God, however, seems not to have learned that lesson, for Jewish tradition insists that Jews are God’s chosen people. True, in essence, we are no better than “the Ethiopians, the Philistines, and the Arameans,” God tells the prophet Amos, but still, “You only have I singled out of all the families of the earth.” We are am s’gula, “the treasured people.” When called to the Torah, we say, “You have chosen us from among all the peoples.”
Solomon Schechter once ran down the usual explanations given. Israel “declared God king at the Red Sea…It was because of Israel’s humbleness and meekness…. It is the holiness of Israel that made them worthy of election.” Most rabbis, however, thought nothing could fully justify this favoritism, so they put it down “to the mere act of grace (or love) on the part of God.”
In other words, the rabbis inherited a doctrine of chosen peoplehood that they could not fully understand but affirmed anyway. Notably, mind you, except for rare exceptions (Yehudah Halevi, for instance, whose claim embarrasses us today) they did not claim inherent racism. It is not as if Jews are innately better than everyone else.
Still, even given the absence of racism, not all great Jewish thinkers accept the claim of chosenness. Recognizing the rabbinic belief that God made covenants not just with Jews but with others also, Mordecai Kaplan dismissed the whole chosenness idea as outmoded. Instead of, “You have chosen us from among all the peoples,” his Torah blessing reads, “You have chosen us along with all the peoples” — a clever emendation, since the Hebrew “mi” (“from”) is easily altered to the similarly sounding “im” (“with”).
Is Kaplan right? Or can we save the idea of being chosen by having recourse to something more likely than the reasons assembled by Schechter and more palatable than the inherent “betterness” provided by Halevi.
I like the challenge of this week’s sedra, according to which Joseph’s chosenness was rooted in his pursuit of wisdom. Perhaps chosenness is not what we already are but what we have been asked to become: students of Torah. Like Joseph before Jacob, we are expected to be “wise before God.”
Other peoples are called to exemplify whatever else the world needs; the distinctive Jewish charge is the expectation to study — not just arts and sciences, though that too is God’s wisdom, but Torah, the values and ideals that epitomize humanity at its best. We are called only to be the children of God who apply ourselves to Torah. If and only if we study Torah — and purely by virtue of the Torah we epitomize — can we call ourselves “chosen.” Torah, moreover, is open to anyone, not just born Jews.
Whether that will save us from some wrathful “brothers” down the pike, no one knows. But we will not, at least, have done ourselves in by abandoning the only thing for which it pays to risk being Jewish in the first place. This year again, with each and every candle lighting, I plan on retelling the Hanukka miracle, but only after I have already studied some Torah earlier in the day.
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, cofounder of Synagogue 3000, is the Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor of Liturgy, Worship, and Ritual at the Hebrew Union College in New York. He is the coeditor, with David Arnow, of My People’s Passover Haggadah: Traditional Texts, Modern Commentaries (Jewish Lights).
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