“We Jews persisted in history … where are the Babylonians, the Edomites, the Moabites with their multitudes of gods? They’re all gone, but our tenacious little group of Jews lives on. And we do so because what you’ve been reading in Deuteronomy is to us a real thing. One crucial passage you must have noticed. It has an historic actuality, whether you Gentiles and we Jews like it or not.” “Which one?” Without consulting the Torah, Eliav quoted, “ ‘For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on earth the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people.’

