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Choosing the System
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah
All the Israelites are chosen, but some are more chosen than others. It all started back with Abraham and God’s promise, saying, “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and those who damn you I will curse, and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed.” At that point, it was only Abraham who had been chosen. Abraham, in the biblical text, had done nothing in particular to deserve God’s attention, to deserve the status of having been chosen. Over the course of Abraham’s story, we see that chosen status transferred to his son Isaac, through no particular merit of his own. The status continues down the generations, to Jacob and his sons, and through them to all of Israel.
In Genesis, chosenness and covenant are associated. The covenant God made with Abraham and passes down through the generations is what it means to be chosen. Moreover, Abraham and his descendants also engage in the covenant of circumcision. However, there is almost no other behavior expected from us in Genesis that would explain why we merited the status or how we might merit keeping it. Our ancestors engaged in all sorts of questionable behavior, from stealing birthrights, to trying to murder their brothers. It is not for their actions that these people were chosen. God just chose them.
The covenant changes at Sinai. Demands are placed on us. As we read in Exodus 19, “If you will truly heed my voice and keep my covenant, you will become for me a treasure among all the peoples, for mine is all the earth. And as for you, you will become for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” In order to be in relationship with God, in order for God to continue to choose each of us as individuals, we have to choose God as well. When we do not, the covenant with Abraham still stands. God still has chosen the Israelite people forever. But God does not choose those individuals who do not choose God.
Within this framework, God chooses the Levites as distinctive among the Israelites. We opened the Book of Numbers by trying to define the way in which they were distinct in their chosenness: “And you shall give the Levites to Aaron and to his sons, wholly given shall they be from the Israelites. And Aaron and his sons you shall single out, that they keep their priesthood, and the stranger who draws near shall be put to death… And as for me, look, I have taken the Levites from the midst of the Israelites in place of every firstborn womb-breach of the Israelites, that the Levites be mine.”
It is unclear whether the Levites are chosen because of who they are and what they do, in a way similar to the Sinai covenant, or if they are chosen just because, in a way similar to the covenant with Abraham. Having been chosen, they assume special duties. But we are never told why they were chosen for their particular role. Note also, that they are chosen to serve the Kohanim. They are chosen, but not the most chosen.
Just two weeks ago, we read of Miriam and Aaron’s difficulties with the idea of chosenness. They are as chosen as you can get without being Moses. And yet it is not enough. Their complaint against Moses was in regards to Moses’s choices. If the only thing our patriarchs in Genesis did that mattered for maintaining their status was to choose wives, Moses seems to have failed on that front. It makes sense that Miriam and Aaron would use his choice of wife to dispute his status as most chosen. But there too, Miriam and Aaron are punished. It is not because of what Moses does or doesn’t do that he is chosen. He just is.
In our parashah, Korah the Levite tries to understand the heart of chosenness. He tries to make it make sense. He tries to force God to move from an Abraham model to a Sinai model. Korah makes arguments about who he is and what he does as proof that he deserves a higher chosenness status. Instead, Korah is chosen to die.
Chosenness is at the root of our existence, of our identity. The Israelites would not exist if God had not chosen us. From our perspective it is inscrutable. We cannot make it seem rational. We cannot force a connection between our actions and God’s actions. We are chosen into a system. That which we do not understand we should not try to break.
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