Chosen and Especial?

There is part of the Torah that contains the promise the Lord made to the Jews. He is supposed to faithfully keep the covenant He has with the Jewish people “to the thousandth generation” provided that the Jewish people will observe the commandments faithfully. This promise states that “the LORD your God will maintain faithfully for you the covenant that he made on oath with your fathers. He will favor you and multiply you. He will bless the issue of your womb and the product of your soil… in the land that He swore your fathers to assign to you.”

This kind of promise is to be taken very seriously, especially because the Jewish people actually follow all the rites and all the ceremonies and prayers, and are in general very observant of the laws that rule their religion.

The Jewish people have been attacked and victimized for many centuries almost in every part of the world they have lived. They were chosen by God to be the preferred ones but they also have been chosen by many other groups and nations to persecute and torture and even to exterminate. It seems a very high price to pay for being the Chosen People.

Being for so many years subjects of so much violence, maybe their best defense was to resort to intelligence and solidarity to try to survive so numerous attacks. The only thing they could oppose to all the violence was a clear thinking and a stubborn non-violent resistance. They have their ways to live, learn and educate their children. And after many centuries of such an agitated life they are still here, following their traditions and respecting their religion. And they still believe that they are the chosen ones.

That is why the fact that there are some among the chosen ones that are not capable to live up to the expectations can be so difficult to believe. But they are there even if, as Michael Chabon says “ (Jews) have been trained, implicitly and explicitly to ignore (stupid people amongst them)” However, because in our days there is nothing that can escape being in the news, every error can be known and recorded and the rest of the world can (very clearly) see that Jewish people may be the chosen ones but not exactly very especial, because we all can see (and must accept) that they are not safe from committing as many mistakes and slip ups as the Goyim do.