To be a Jew, essentially and not just accidentally, is to regard the Jewish people as one's sole primal community. Election by the unique God requires total and unconditional loyalty to one people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The election of the Jewish people is the result of God's falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him.
As a matter of fact, part of being Jewish is the whole question of what it is to be a Jew.
Jews have not only become equal citizens in Western democracies, they have become leading citizens. And, of course, the reestablishment of the State of Israel has given Jews a political presence in the world they have not had since biblical times.
The Jewish tradition presents itself as the greatest revelation of God's truth that can be known in the world. That is why we call ourselves 'the chosen people.' It is not that we choose ourselves. It means that we have been elected by God and given the Torah.
Most Jews, like most rational persons, know that their personal identity and their ethnic identity are not one and the same.
For a Christian, Jesus is the unique and only way that God has fully revealed himself. For a Jew this cannot be.
My own electorate, which I represented for 36 years as an anti-apartheid politician, had a considerable number of Jewish voters supporting me throughout my career.
I think that being Jewish is in some ways unique because there's this conflation of race, culture and religion.
Being a Jew is like walking in the wind or swimming: you are touched at all points and conscious everywhere.
There is something very very special, universal and easily identifiable among all Jews; it is beyond territory, it is something we all have in common.
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