Question
God has mentioned in Torah, Bible, and the Quran that Israelis are chosen people of God, in a way. Abraham has a very important stand in all three religions, and he is the father of Israel. If you trace it down, you will see that Jews and Christians are descendents of his other son, which I have forgotten his name, and Muslims come from Ishmael. So, if God says that the “children of Israel” are chosen, that means that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are chosen people of God, right? Please explain it to me.
Answer
I appreciate your important and thoughtful question. I want to say at the outset that people usually misunderstand what “chosen people” means. Usually they think it means, the chosen people gets presents and get rewarded, unlike everyone else. That’s not right at all. What it actually means is that Israel and G-d have a special relationship. We stood at Mount Sinai and accepted upon ourselves to keep his Torah, something that no other nation did or would have done. We have more obligations than any other nation. If we do have more reward, it is because we are doing more also.
However, it is important to know that it says in our Torah that the righteous of every nation can serve G-d, without being Jews. There are a set of laws that G-d gave to all humanity, a different set, and if a non-Jew keeps them, he is also worthy of very great reward and closeness to G-d. We are not in competition with non-Jews; we’re all on the same team, or at least we can be.
Now, as to what you asked specifically: The particular laws of our Torah were given to the “children of Israel”, not the “children of Abraham”, as it says very many times in the Torah. Israel was the second name given to Jacob. His father was Isaac, and his grand-father was Abraham. As you pointed out, Isaac’s brother was Ishmael, and Israel’s
brother was Esav. While I suppose that not all Muslims are descendents of Ishmael, nor all Christians descendents of Esav, I think it is true that they were the founders of those parts of civilization, and the spiritual forebears. So they are indeed close relatives of Israel, and perhaps we could be very close. Indeed, our sages say that in the end of days, Ishmael (and his descendents) will come to closeness to G-d and to us.
Best wishes,
Michoel Reach
