A Jewish rejection of chosenness
To the Editor:
We have been reading with interest and curiosity the essays on chosenness in the Summer 2025 issue of SAPIR and have found it disappointing as well as puzzling that SAPIR did not dedicate at least one article to articulating Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s critique of that concept. In the space of this letter we hope to rectify that omission.
Kaplan resisted and rejected modern attempts at reinterpreting chosenness precisely because, in his words, “by no kind of dialectics is it possible to remove the odium of comparison from any reinterpretation of an idea which makes invidious distinctions between one people and another.” (The Future of the American Jew, p. 217)
On conceptual and rational grounds alone, Kaplan might have declared the entire issue to be moot. In his naturalistic and humanistic understanding of religion, God is conceived of as a power or process, not as a supernatural Being who consciously plays favorites among individuals and human families. Kaplan’s God cannot “choose” anyone, any more than, say, gravity could make a distinction between one ethnicity, religion or nation and another.
Kaplan’s objection to the idea of chosenness as a religious value was also ethical. The assumption of a predetermined, supernaturally bestowed, and inherent superiority adhering to the Jewish people, is morally problematic, modern apologetics and poetic midrashim notwithstanding.
Chosenness, whether imagined as inherent in Jews through an embodied genetics (an ugly, racially-tinged, and essentialist notion) or as inherent in Jewish religion through divinely bestowed grace and covenantal faith, is for Kaplan an anachronism unworthy of the Jewish people (or any people) in the modern world. It begs the question of what Walter Kaufmann, in his book The Faith of a Heretic, called “gerrymandering,” contrasting “the best of ours” with “the worst of theirs.”
It is curious and disconcerting that contemporary Jewish thinkers who have with ease dispensed with other classical religious beliefs — Torah as verbatim revelation from Sinai, the resurrection of the dead, and the coming of a supernatural Messiah, to name but three — somehow draw the line at the concept of chosenness, which they labor hard to sanitize. For those of us for whom Kaplan’s arguments are convincing, we endorse his conclusion that “the very assumption of a predetermined and permanent superiority, no matter in what respect, does not lend itself to reinterpretation” (The Future of the American Jew, p. 217).
Admittedly, as the articles in the SAPIR series demonstrate, Kaplan’s position on chosenness remains a minority opinion in contemporary Jewish conversation. But surely the critiques he brings are deserving of discussion alongside the many attempts to defend the concept of chosenness represented in the pages of SAPIR.
Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso
Carmel, Ind.
Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso
Carmel, Ind.
Rabbi Richard Hirsh
Bryn Mawr, Pa.