Spiritual Uniqueness

While we, Jewish People, are in exile, so is the rest of humanity. Our displacement is their own. For to usurp our portion is a denial of their own portion. To lay claim to our spiritual uniqueness is a denial of their own spiritual uniqueness; hence, the replacement theologies of other faiths. They don’t realize that their replacement theologies are really displacement theologies. May the Messiah arrive speedily in our days and hopefully remedy this situation with his Torah teachings.

By explaining to the rest of humanity about their own spiritual uniqueness, he will be helping the Jewish People too. Everything is best understood by comparison within context. I think that it is very difficult for the Jewish People to appreciate and understand their own spiritual uniqueness, while the other Peoples are in the dark about their own. For example, telling someone that he’s humanity’s heart only truly makes sense if there’s clarity about who are humanity’s lungs, arms, legs, eyes, ears, etc. A heart in isolation feels out of context and does not understand why he looks as he does and functions in certain ways. Some things extremely vital about his features may appear insignificant to him because he does not know what they are for.   

Before offering the Jewish People the Torah, God came around to the various Peoples of humanity and offered it to them. Had they accepted, the Torah would have probably be given to all those Peoples who accepted it, together. Since God’s ways are straight and honest, making the rounds to offer the Torah to the various nations could not have been simply a ruse. There had to be at least some potential for other nations to accept it. Plus, He definitely had to have something spiritually special in mind to offer them, had they accepted. It probably would have been something from the Torah of the Messiah that related to them their own spiritual uniqueness ~ as this was pre-golden calf and hence, under the program of the first set of Tablets (the Tablets/Torah of the Messiah). At that time, the potential for more than one nation to achieve a Divine message about their spiritual uniqueness and how to use it to connect to God was clearly an open possibility.

While I find it disturbing how the national cultures of the world “raid” the Jewish People’s spiritual uniqueness because they haven’t yet discovered their own, I find it even more disturbing how it weakens the ability of the Jewish People to settle into their own spiritual uniqueness.

As mentioned, mostly, we know things via contextual comparison. We know “hot” by knowing “cold”. If there was no existence of “cold” our knowledge of “hot” would be defective. Similarly, the Jewish People can only arrive at a full appreciation of their own spiritual uniqueness if there were other known versions of spiritual uniqueness to compare to. Again, it’s like a heart living in ignorance about the rest of the body. If the contextual comparison is defective, something very vital is missing to the knowledge base.

One of the vexing questions of the modern era is the chosenness of the Jewish People. In eras when superficial differences were imposed by law and culture, people (whether Jewish or not) may have deluded themselves into thinking that the unique distinction between the Jewish People and everyone else was readily apparent. The modern era erased many of these superficialities and cast much doubt on such pithy perspectives. One of my favorite examples was an interview with a troupe of actors dressed in perfect Hassidic garb. When one of them was asked about his costumed identity, he innocently shrugged, “What do I know, I am not even a good Catholic?”  

What truly needs to “pop out of the woodwork” is for the Jewish People to become fully aware of their true spiritual uniqueness. It’s one, which does not depend on superficialities alone, like culture or history. However, it seems to me that such an awareness can only fully emerged into higher relief when the spiritual uniqueness of at least several other Peoples are known as well.   

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