Abstract
This anthology contains ten essays by different authors along with a preface and concluding chapter penned by Goshen-Gottstein, focused on the particularistic idea of God’s special election of Israel/the Jewish people and various challenges this theological claim poses in the contemporary pluralistic context. The contributions range across Israelite and later Jewish history and tradition, covering topics such as “The Election and Sanctity of Israel in the Hebrew Bible” (by Israel Knohl), “Aleinu—A Prayer Common to Jews and Gentile God-fearers” (by Menachem Katz), and “Jewish Chosenness—A Contemporary Approach” (by Jerome Gellman). In the preface, the editor explains that this book is one of three related volumes he is publishing about differing facets of Jewish attitudes toward other religious traditions.
This is not a systematic survey of the theme of election within Judaism; nor is it primarily academic in orientation. The essays were commissioned to serve as a resource for a theological educational initiative to inform discussions among Jews grappling with facets of Jewish chosenness that have become more problematic today. While some of the essays survey a variety of views from a specific era without drawing firm conclusions, others engage in a constructive theological attempt to recover often underappreciated parts of the tradition or to explore alternative ways one might interpret troubling streams of Jewish tradition so as to highlight the more universalistic aspects of Judaism. Along the way readers are introduced to many stimulating ideas drawn from a range of (often lesser-known) sources across several historical eras.
The authors are to be commended for forthrightly acknowledging and wrestling with a number of morally troubling conceptions of the Other that are linked to or may flow from the notion of Jewish election, and for striving to find theologically nuanced ways to create greater tolerance toward outsiders and other religious traditions. The title, Judaism’s Challenge, refers to “the challenge that faces Judaism” (xvi). But, one wonders whether more attention should also have been devoted to the challenge that Jewish ideas of divine election pose to the modern pluralistic and supposedly tolerant outlook that, sadly, tends to dismiss the rich, complex, and nuanced theology of Jewish chosenness as simply a form of ethnocentric intolerance.