Americans and Israelis have often thought that their nations were
chosen, in perpetuity, to do God's work. This belief in divine
election is a potent, living force, one that has guided and shaped
both peoples and nations throughout their history and continues to
do so to this day. Through great adversity and despite serious
challenges, Americans and Jews, leaders and followers, have
repeatedly faced the world fortified by a sense that their nation
has a providential destiny.
As Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz argue in this original and
provocative book, what unites the two allies in a "special
friendship" is less common strategic interests than this
deep-seated and lasting theological belief that they were chosen by
God.
The United States and Israel each has understood itself as a
nation placed on earth to deliver a singular message of
enlightenment to a benighted world. Each has stumbled through
history wrestling with this strange concept of chosenness, trying
both to grasp the meaning of divine election and to bear the burden
it placed them under. It was this idea that provided an
indispensable justification when the Americans made a revolution
against Britain, went to war with and expelled the Indians,
expanded westward, built an overseas empire, and most recently
waged war in Iraq. The equivalent idea gave rise to the Jewish
people in the first place, sustained them in exodus and exile, and
later animated the Zionist movement, inspiring the Israelis to
vanquish their enemies and conquer the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip. Everywhere you look in American and Israeli history, the
idea of chosenness is there.
"The Chosen Peoples" delivers a bold new take on both nations'
histories. It shows how deeply the idea of chosenness has affected
not only their enthusiasts but also their antagonists. It digs
deeply beneath the superficialities of headlines, the details of
negotiations, the excuses and justifications that keep cropping up
for both nations' successes and failures. It shows how deeply
ingrained is the idea of a chosen people in both nations'
histories--and yet how complicated that idea really is. And it
offers interpretations of chosenness that both nations dearly need
in confronting their present-day quandaries.
Weaving together history, theology, and politics, "The Chosen
Peoples" vividly retells the dramatic story of two nations bound
together by a wild and sacred idea, takes unorthodox perspectives
on some of our time's most searing conflicts, and offers an
unexpected conclusion: only by taking the idea of chosenness
seriously, wrestling with its meaning, and assuming its
responsibilities can both nations thrive.
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