36 Seconds
Why was it necessary for God to choose one people? Why did God promise that that chosen people would survive exile and persecution? The Egypt experience of slavery and liberation through the plagues, followed by the splitting of the Red Sea, the Revelation at Sinai, and forty years of miracles in the desert, constituted a multiplicity of events which provided irrefutable evidence of God’s existence and of His intervention in human affairs. Let us call that multiplicity of events “the Event”.

Not only did the Event need to occur, but its memory needed to be preserved and transmitted indefinitely down the ages. The witnessing of the Event could self-evidently only be experienced by one people. And the preservation and transmission of its memory could best be achieved by the same people. And so it was necessary for God to choose that people. He did so by choosing Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and then designating their descendants as the chosen people.

​The exile of the Children of Israel from the Promised Land is foretold in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but God promises too not to destroy them completely. There is a reason for preserving them: the descendants of the witnesses to the Event are most likely to ensure the preservation and practical effect of its memory, and by their very existence, to attest to its authenticity. Significantly, verse 10 of Chapter 43 of Isaiah includes: "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord ..... "

​And so, the devastating destruction of the Holocaust was soon followed by the miracle of the establishment of the State of Israel – a miracle followed by further miracles, which have ensured the survival of Israel, a tiny, tiny island in a massive sea seething with implacable, visceral and deadly hatred and aggression. And the survival of Israel has immeasurably strengthened the prospect of the survival of the Jewish people.

ChaiFM - Insight 15 & Conclusion