Zionist college students cry and demand a security guard shut down a peaceful pro-Palestine demonstration

[u/PlenitudeOpulence]

[u/Vokayy]

TLDR: Kinda not true, yes Jews were chosen by god to preform the mitzvot (responsibilities of sanctifying gods will), but this in turn was stemmed from historical supremacy and passed on since.

The idea of “chosen people” comes from the Gemara (Shabbat 88a-b) on the Midrash’s commentary that retells the account of how God asked each nation simultaneously in their own language whether they wanted to adopt the Torah’s 612 mitzvot (positive and negative ones). Each nation declined for their own reasons, but Jews accepted it. This narrative stems from the same propaganda that the 19th kingdom of David pushed when they were compiling and writing the supremacy of their own version of Judaism and historical accounts (the Old Testament we know today). It’s inherently supremacist because it was written as being a propaganda piece for the kingdom’s narrative and that gets passed down as historically accurate account of jewish history taught to Jewish kids from all sects (except Reform and Reconstructionist). This constant barrage of clearly biased framework (cannot and will not get into the details of every account that the Gemara and Torah inaccurately discredits other nations between 11th BCE and 3rd CE) is what greatly contributes to the way Jewish people operate today; being raised and told that they are inherently superior in moral and intellectual reasoning (see the clear examples of the birth of Religious Zionism and the steps taken to keep it against any critique).

Now for my anecdotal account of how I was taught as a child and then later cemented to when I was a teenager: We were taught that other nations were either too lazy, barbaric, or intellectual inept to understand the greatness of the Torah, and that god knew this (as he already freed Jews out of Egypt and helped them traverse the desert for months), and was only doing it out of clear conscious gesture. This again aligns with how Semitic Southern kingdom Jews viewed other Semitic people in the lavant (common propaganda against the more wealthy and prosperous Moabite and Armenian kingdoms during 9th century BCE).

Sources: Bible Unearthed (Israel Finkelstein)

Knowing too Much (Norman Finkelstein)

My Anecdotal lived experience of a Theology taught Orthodox Jew.

Talmud (Gemara Shabbat); Midrash

[u/suitorarmorfan → u/Vokayy]

Thank you for the info, I had no idea!

[u/Vokayy → u/suitorarmorfan]

Np, gotta put my studious years to use somewhere