Black Hebrew Israelites
It was created by G-d, and all things created by G-d are good. The Talmud notes that without the yetzer ra the desire to satisfy personal needs , man would not build a house, marry a wife, beget children or conduct business affairs. But the yetzer ra can lead to wrongdoing when it is not controlled by the yetzer tov. There is nothing inherently wrong with hunger, but it can lead you to steal food. There is nothing inherently wrong with sexual desire, but it can lead you to commit rape, adultery, incest or other sexual perversion.
The yetzer ra is generally seen as something internal to a person, not as an external force acting on a person. The idea that "the devil made me do it" is not in line with the majority of thought in Judaism. Although it has been said that Satan and the yetzer ra are one and the same, this is more often understood as meaning that Satan is merely a personification of our own selfish desires, rather than that our selfish desires are caused by some external force.
People have the ability to choose which impulse to follow: That is the heart of the Jewish understanding of free will. The Talmud notes that all people are descended from Adam, so no one can blame his own wickedness on his ancestry. On the contrary, we all have the ability to make our own choices, and we will all be held responsible for the choices we make.
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Begin reading God's Word ad-free with instant access to your new online study library. Want more information about Bible Gateway Plus? The Tanya does not talk about Jews and non-Jews as social groups, but describes the internal struggle between the materialistic "Gentile" and spiritual "Jewish" levels of consciousness within every human soul. An anti-Zionist interpretation of Tanya was offered by Abraham Yehudah Khein , a prominent Ukrainian Chabad rabbi, who supported anarchist communism and considered Peter Kropotkin a great Tzaddik.
Khein basically read the Tanya backwards; since the souls of idol worshipers are known to be evil, according to the Tanya, while the Jewish souls are known to be good, he concluded that truly altruistic people are really Jewish, in a spiritual sense, while Jewish nationalists and class oppressors are not. By this logic, he claimed that Vladimir Solovyov and Rabindranath Tagore probably have Jewish souls, while Leon Trotsky and other totalitarians do not, and many Zionists, whom he compared to apes , are merely "Jewish by birth certificate". Nachman of Breslov also believed that Jewishness is a level of consciousness, and not an intrinsic inborn quality.
Correcting Two Misrepresentations
He wrote that, according to the Book of Malachi , one can find "potential Jews" among all nations, whose souls are illuminated by the leap of "holy faith", which "activated" the Jewishness in their soul. These people would otherwise convert to Judaism, but prefer not to do so. Instead, they recognize the Divine unity within their pagan religions. Isaac Arama , an influential philosopher and mystic of the 15th century, believed that righteous non-Jews are spiritually identical to the righteous Jews.
He explicitly included Christians and Muslims in this category. Meiri rejected all Talmudic laws that discriminate between the Jews and non-Jews, claiming that they only apply to the ancient idolators, who had no sense of morality. The only exceptions are a few laws related directly or indirectly to intermarriage, which Meiri did recognize. Meiri applied his idea of "spiritual Israel" to the Talmudic statements about unique qualities of the Jewish people.
For example, he believed that the famous saying that Israel is above astrological predestination Ein Mazal le-Israel also applied to the followers of other ethical faiths. He also considered countries, inhabited by decent moral non-Jews, such as Languedoc , as a spiritual part of the Holy Land.
One Jewish critic of chosenness was the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Bringing evidence from the Bible itself, he argues that God's choice of Israel was not unique he had chosen other nations before choosing the Hebrew nation and that the choice of the Jews is neither inclusive it does not include all of the Jews, but only the 'pious' ones nor exclusive it also includes 'true gentile prophets'. Finally, he argues that God's choice is not unconditional.
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Recalling the numerous times God threatened the complete destruction of the Hebrew nation, he asserts that this choice is neither absolute, nor eternal, nor necessary. Reconstructionist Judaism rejects the concept of chosenness. Its founder, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan , said that the idea that God chose the Jewish people leads to racist beliefs among Jews, and thus must be excised from Jewish theology. This rejection of chosenness is made explicit in the movement's siddurim prayer books. It states that the idea of chosenness is "morally untenable", because anyone who has such beliefs "implies the superiority of the elect community and the rejection of others.
Not all Reconstructionists accept this view. The newest siddur of the movement, Kol Haneshamah , includes the traditional blessings as an option, and some modern Reconstructionist writers have opined that the traditional formulation is not racist, and should be embraced.
Jews as the chosen people - Wikipedia
Falk rejects all concepts relating to hierarchy or distinction; she sees any distinction as leading to the acceptance of other kinds of distinctions, thus leading to prejudice. She writes that as a politically liberal feminist, she must reject distinctions made between men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, Jews and non-Jews, and to some extent even distinctions between the Sabbath and the other six days of the week. She thus rejects the idea of chosenness as unethical.
She also rejects Jewish theology in general, and instead holds to a form of religious humanism. Yet it is particularly problematic for many Jews today, in that it seems to fly in the face of monotheistic belief that all humanity is created in the divine image—and hence, all humanity is equally loved and valued by God [ Reconstructionist author Judith Plaskow also criticises the idea of chosenness, for many of the same reasons as Falk. A politically liberal lesbian, Plaskow rejects most distinctions made between men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, and Jews and non-Jews.
In contrast to Falk, Plaskow does not reject all concepts of difference as inherently leading to unethical beliefs, and holds to a more classical form of Jewish theism than Falk. A number of responses to these views have been made by Reform and Conservative Jews; they hold that these criticisms are against teachings that do not exist within liberal forms of Judaism, and which are rare in Orthodox Judaism outside certain Haredi communities, such as Chabad.
A separate criticism stems from the very existence of feminist forms of Judaism in all denominations of Judaism, which do not have a problem with the concepts of chosenness. The children of Israel enjoy a special status in the Islamic book, the Quran 2: Some Christians believe that the Jews were God's chosen people Deuteronomy Other Christians, such as the Christadelphians , believe that God has not rejected Israel as his chosen people Romans Augustine criticized Jewish chosenness as "carnal.
Avi Beker , an Israeli scholar and former Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress , regarded the idea of the chosen people as Judaism's defining concept and "the central unspoken psychological, historical, and theological problem at the heart of Jewish-Gentile relations. The History of an Idea, and the Anatomy of an Obsession , Beker expresses the view that the concept of chosenness is the driving force behind Jewish-Gentile relations, explaining both the admiration and, more pointedly, the envy and hatred the world has felt for the Jews in religious and also secular terms.
Beker argues that while Christianity has modified its doctrine on the displacement of the Jews, Islam has neither reversed nor reformed its theology concerning the succession of both the Jews and the Christians. According to Beker, this presents a major barrier to conflict resolution in the Arab-Israeli conflict. He points out however that modern anthropological theories "do not merely proclaim the inherent universal equality of all people [as] human beings; they also stress the equivalence of all human cultures.
Some people [42] have claimed that Judaism's chosen people concept is racist because it implies that Jews are superior to non-Jews. The Anti-Defamation League asserts that the concept of a chosen people within Judaism has nothing to do with racial superiority. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jewish peoplehood Jewish identity. Tanakh Torah Nevi'im Ketuvim.