Was it odd of God to choose the Jews?

(by Steve Maltz)

We Jews are a strange people. Buffeted and battered by the forces of history, we survive with our senses intact. Our story is perhaps the saddest of all, yet we have helped to give humour to the world! A race that was being systematically slaughtered by Nazi brutes in Europe was, at the same time, entertaining America on stage and screen. A people who have, on the world stage, produced the highest proportion to size of Nobel Prize winners have been persecuted and reviled and forced into Jewish ghettos. A folk who provided Gentiles, in Jesus of Nazareth, with their saviour and inspiration are tortured and killed in the name of the same man.

So many contradictions.

Why can't they all just leave us alone - to create, invent, compose and entertain - and find another people to torment? What's it all about? So, the Jews are meant to be different, the 'chosen people'. As Tevya said in The Fiddler in the Roof, 'Maybe we've had enough of being chosen, Lord, can't you go and choose someone else, now?' Do we feel the same way? Does our chosen-ness mean anything to us now, in the late 20th Century? Sure, it's a source of great pride when we look at the achievements of our people, often against great odds. But we don't like reading and hearing about the other side, the Holocaust and the pogroms. Yet they both work together, they are both part of the same package, like strawberries and cream (or should I say 'smoked salmon and beigels').

Jewish achievements in the world at large are nothing short of astounding! There are about 12.5 million Jews world-wide (1995 figures), out of World population of 5,300 million. This means that about 0.25% of the world is Jewish; about 1 person out of every 400 eats gefilte fish and reads the Jewish Chronicle (This is probably a bit of a generalisation as not even most English Jews read the J.C. and some of us actually hate fish!). So one would naturally expect that 0.25% of the worlds' scientists, musicians, entertainers, writers etc. etc. would, on average, be Jewish. Well, it hasn't worked out like that, something has gone wrong in our calculations, our decimal point has gone haywire! Just looking in the period since the mid nineteenth century we find that about 25% of the world's scientists have been Jews. That's a full one hundred times too many! It has been estimated also that, in 1978, over half the Nobel Prize winners were Jewish. Over 50% of the main contributors to the progress of mankind that year coming from 0.25% of the population! The mind boggles.

We can only conclude that there is something unusual about these folk! But what is it? Is it in the genes, a biologically inherited characteristic? Is it the environment, perhaps something about being herded into ghettos and forced into inward contemplation? These are definitely contributory factors probably in the same way (and it has to be said) why Afro-Caribbeans excel at sport and music. But Jewish people have impacted the world in so many different spheres and have influenced the thinking of the world so dramatically, that we need to look deeper at this situation. The three men who have, arguably, most influenced the 20th century, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx were all Jewish, as were the founders of two of the main world religions, Judaism and Christianity. Even Muhammad, the founder of Islam, drew greatly from Jewish sources. I'm sure someday someone will discover that the Buddha was a victim of the first Diaspora who got lost and ended up in India!

So, what is special about this folk? And where does it say that these people are special, chosen for some purpose? Where does it say "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." The Bible, of course. How could the writers of the Bible have known about Einstein, Marx and Freud, to say nothing of the scores of other major influences? How could they know about 'this one solitary life' , the Jew, Jesus, written about in a famous essay.

"Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself ... I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life."

Like it or not the above is true, though the effects felt on the Jewish nation as a result of this particular 'solitary life' has been one of the tragedies of history. This is a story that spans centuries and forms a good part of the sinister life-story of anti-Semitism, a movement born out of error but propagated by hate.

So the Bible predicted that these 'chosen people' would be a blessing for the world. How could the writers of the Bible know that, at a time when the Jews were but a small group of people amongst many others in a small part of the world, they were to become a major influence on the world? How did these writers know that out of all the ancient people such as the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Edomites and Ammonites, only the Jews were to survive as a people? How many Hittites do you know? Is there an Amalekite down your road? Do you know any Canaanites at work? Of course not. Although all of these people were contemporaries of the Jews, none of them have survived - just as the Bible has predicted!

We can open the Bible and read from Genesis, the first book of Moses, the promise that God gave to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people:

"I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Abraham was told that he would be the father of a special people, a chosen people. This people, the Jews, whether they liked it or not and whether the Gentiles liked it or not, were to bless not just themselves but the whole world. Fruits of this blessing can be seen as the unique contribution of Jews on the world stage, as mentioned earlier, though it is hard to see the legacy of Marx (communism), Einstein (atomic bomb) and Freud (expensive psychiatrists) as actually being a blessing!

No, the real blessing given by Jews to the world is by being the people from whom was born the Messiah, the saviour of the World, Jesus of Nazareth. Only through this man can one, whether Jew or Gentile, be blessed. As he said, in his own words,

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me".

Gentiles may say, "how odd of God to choose the Jews", but I would answer, "if he hadn't so presumed, you Gentiles would be doomed!"

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