Gürkan 2008, p.1: "The idea of chosenness, which basically denotes the special relationship between God and the people of Israel, is the raison d’être of the Jewish religion as well as Jewish people… what is unique about the Jewish idea of chosenness is related to the fact that it provides Judaism with the elements of religion and nationality at once. This is why the Jewish religion is bound up with the existence and experience of the Jewish people as a physical collective entity." Gürkan, Salime Leyla[in Turkish] (2008-12-05). The Jews as a Chosen People: Tradition and transformation. Routledge. ISBN978-1-134-03707-0.
Coogan 2019, p.1: “Beginning in the early chapters of the book of Genesis, chosenness is attached to individuals whom God supposedly preferred — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — and is inherited by their descendants, who have a special status because God chose their ancestors. Although in the pages of the Bible some of those originally chosen eventually became excluded, the concept of chosenness continued to be applied to subgroups within the original chosen people.” Coogan, Michael (2019-04-02). God's Favorites: Judaism, Christianity, and the Myth of Divine Chosenness. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN978-0-8070-0194-3.
qtd. in Mackenzie: "Yes, I do believe that the chosen people concept as affirmed by Judaism in its holy writ, its prayers, and its millennial tradition. In fact, I believe that every people—and indeed, in a more limited way, every individual—is "chosen" or destined for some distinct purpose in advancing the designs of Providence. Only, some fulfill their mission and others do not. Maybe the Greeks were chosen for their unique contributions to art and philosophy, the Romans for their pioneering services in law and government, the British for bringing parliamentary rule into the world, and the Americans for piloting democracy in a pluralistic society. The Jews were chosen by God to be 'peculiar unto Me' as the pioneers of religion and morality; that was and is their national purpose."
Lamm, Norman. "Seventy Faces: Articles of Faith, Volume 1."Google Books. 16 February 2018: "The chosenness of Israel relates exclusively to its spiritual vocation embodied in the Torah; the doctrine, indeed, was announced at Sinai. Whenever it is mentioned in our liturgy—such as the blessing immediately preceding the Shema....it is always related to Torah or Mitzvot (commandments). This spiritual vocation consists of two complementary functions, described as "Goy Kadosh", that of a holy nation, and "Mamlekhet Kohanim", that of a kingdom of priests. The first term denotes the development of communal separateness or differences in order to achieve a collective self-transcendence. ... The second term implies the obligation of this brotherhood of the spiritual elite toward the rest of mankind; priesthood is defined by the prophets as fundamentally a teaching vocation."
Gürkan 2008, pp.92–93: “The question of how Zionists understood the idea of chosenness was also part of their evaluation of the past, present, and future of the Jewish people, and was not free of ambiguity. Zionism, as a secular national movement, ended up including a variety of positions, ranging from secular political to religious messianic ones… [the] programme of normalization did not mean depriving of the Jews of their ‘privileged’ or ‘unique’ position as the chosen people, but rather abandoning their ‘abnormal’ condition as a people without a home. In other words, while Zionists, for the most part, did away with the element of ‘difference’ embedded in chosenness, they retained, to a great extent, the notions of ‘uniqueness’ and ‘superiority’. Although it was difficult to combine an aspiration for normality with an ongoing sense of chosenness, either in terms of divine election or the unique national genius of the Jewish people, classical Zionism softened the apparent contradiction, turning the notion of chosenness into a useful factor for Jewish national liberation and a necessary element for the improvement of world civilization. Accordingly, the notion of chosenness provided the Zionist movement with a missionary role. In this way, the universalist and redemptive implications of the traditional doctrine of chosenness, particularly in terms of ‘leading the world’, were employed to a great extent by the Zionists to justify their goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine… The traditional notion of chosenness, which originally referred to the Jewish people as a physical collective entity, was transformed in this way into the Jewish nationhood as a political–ethical entity. The theme of ‘leading the world’ was also used by the socialist Jews of the Diaspora. They would attribute a ‘vanguard’ role to the Jews, as ‘a chosen people not of God but of history’, a people ‘preaching a salvation open to all mankind’... On the other hand, the sense of uniqueness attached to Jewish chosenness rendered Zionism a unique form of nationalism, which might be seen in connection with the above-mentioned missionary role… Thus, the Zionist formula built around the secular notion of chosenness would be that the Jews, as a great and model nation deserved to have a homeland as much as, or even more than, any other people, for their own sake as well for the sake of the world. In other words, the secularized notion of the chosen people, in terms of the greatness of the Jews, would be used as a justification for the Jewish colonization in Palestine.” Gürkan, Salime Leyla[in Turkish] (2008-12-05). The Jews as a Chosen People: Tradition and transformation. Routledge. ISBN978-1-134-03707-0.
Coogan 2019, pp.110, 114: “But for ultrareligious Zionists, recognition of Palestinian territorial sovereignty is not negotiable, because Jewish control of the original land of Canaan is divinely ordained. Harold Fisch, himself a religious Zionist and former rector of Bar-Ilan University, put it this way: From scattered colonies to a National Home; from a National Home to a state in a fraction of the land; and from that to the liberation of the land of Israel as a whole on behalf of the Jewish people: here was a process that we did not initiate; at each stage we had no option but to respond to a demand made on us; we are manifestly coerced by the logic of tragedy and redemption. The concept of a chosen people, originally one group’s self-definition as superior to others, has again become God’s immutable decree. A similar reading of the Bible as God’s detailed revelation about our own times is shared by fundamentalist Christians, many of whom are also ardent Zionists… Both Jewish and Christian fundamentalists indulge in a facile interpretation of the Bible as written not for its original audiences, but as a kind of secret code that only they have truly deciphered. According to their readings, although mutually inconsistent in detail, the land God promised to Abraham belongs only to the Jews, and they have now reclaimed it as God had planned. The Palestinian Arabs are not chosen, and have no share in the Promised Land, as God decreed long ago: they are Ishmaelites.” Coogan, Michael (2019-04-02). God's Favorites: Judaism, Christianity, and the Myth of Divine Chosenness. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN978-0-8070-0194-3.
Dvorsky, George (23 October 2012). “Einstein's 'I don't believe in God' letter has sold on eBay..." “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.... I cannot see anything “chosen” about them”.
Levy 1993, p.91: "The concept of ‘chosenness’ or ‘election’ has been a central idea throughout the long history of Jewish thought from the Bible, through the Talmud, rabbinic thought, medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism, to modern and contemporary Jewish philosophy and theology. It certainly was and still is one of the most perplexing and controversial concepts of the Jewish religious tradition and, at the same time, one of the most important and decisive ones for Jewish life and history…every discussion of chosenness today has to take into consideration two chief distinct aspects: 1. The important role that the concept of chosenness fulfilled in Jewish life and history in the past; 2. The questionability of its essential meaning today from theoretical, ethical, and humanist viewpoints." Levy, Ze’ev[in German] (1993). "Judaism and Chosenness: On Some Controversial Aspects from Spinoza to Contemporary Jewish Thought". In Daniel H. Frank (ed.). A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought. State University of New York Press. ISBN978-0-7914-1632-7. JSTORjj.18254037.6. Retrieved 2025-08-09.
