Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Chosen explores Judaism’s key defining concept and inquires why it remains the central unspoken and explosive psychological, historical, and theological problem at the heart of Jewish-Gentile relations. Crisscrossing the twin cultural and theological divides between Judaism, Christendom, and Islam, The Chosen explains how the Jews, of all people, have come to represent at once the epitome of both the good and the odious. Beker covers not only the great stories of how the Jews came to be chosen and the Christian, Muslim, and Nazi efforts to appropriate the title, but also the key role “chosenness” plays in contemporary anti-Semitism and in the current Middle East conflict over the Land of Israel and the chosen city of Jerusalem.
Book Description
Everybody knows the expression "The Chosen People" but very few--Jews or non-Jews--are able to speak intelligently about it. The Chosen examines the idea of chosenness for the first time in a work for a readership of Christians, Jews, and others for whom the concept is an important but ill-understood marker for how we, as individuals and communities, distinguish ourselves from each other. What does it mean for Jews to be the "Chosen People"? How is Jewish chosenness perceived by non-Jews? Why does this idea of chosenness still inform new views of anti-Semitism? The Chosen looks at the concept from the Old and New Testaments to the Arab-Israeli conflicts to popular culture references to end-of-time beliefs of evangelicals, and highlights what all of us can learn from this very complex and controversial label.
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