Though both the chareidi and national religious communities frequently find themselves in the crosshairs of the secular media it is very rarely over the same issue. For instance the ban by over fifty rabbis many of them the rabbis of cities against selling or renting apartments to Arabs was almost purely a national religious issue. Greedy landlords who structure their apartments to cram in Sudanese refugees on the outskirts of Bnei Brak or who rent to Arabs who have no permission to live within Israel have occasioned bans in the past by leading chareidi poskim. But in those cases there was no public outcry in part because no effort was made to publicize the ban beyond those who needed to hear it and in part because the bans were clearly understood to be purely local in context.

About two weeks after the rabbis’ ban on selling or renting to Arabs a group of fifty national religious rebbetzins issued their own letter decrying national religious girls working with Arabs and warning them against doing so. Once again cries of racism filled the headlines for a day or two. I happen to think that the rebbetzins were absolutely correct in their warning but the charge of racism would never have been raised against the chareidi community over such an issue because chareidi girls tend to avoid mixed workplaces altogether regardless of the religion or ethnicity of the male workers and when they do work in such a workplace are trained to be far more circumspect in their exchanges with all male employees.

The night the story broke I happened to catch a radio program discussing the “racism” of the rebbetzins’ letter. One of the panelists was Bambi Sheleg who frequently takes the place marked “enlightened Orthodox” on such panels. In the course of her discussion she argued that Judaism does not view Jews as “superior” to others — unique perhaps but not “superior.” It is hard to know whether Sheleg was engaging in mere apologetics or whether she actually believes what she said but she said it with such confidence that I suspect she truly believes it.

The modern world — the world by which Ms. Sheleg must justify her Judaism — is hostile in the extreme to the notion of inherent differences between people. The Jews’ claim to have been chosen by G-d has always enraged gentiles but today it is more antithetical to the zeitgeist than ever before. Most Jews also dismiss the idea of their own chosenness out of hand. It makes them deeply uncomfortable as it clearly did Ms. Sheleg.

Yet religious Jews do assert their superiority. In the blessings over the Torah we thank G-d for having chosen us from all the nations and giving us His Torah. We are taught that the entire purpose of Creation was the Torah we learn and its precepts that we keep. Initially those obligations were supposed to bind all men but as the Ramchal describes eventually the descendants of Avraham Yitzchak and Yaakov were singled out as being uniquely worthy to receive the Torah. From then on the existence of the world became contingent on the eventual acceptance of the Torah by those descendants at Sinai. And in turn the people who accepted the Torah became the bearers of Hashem’s message to the world. Hashem primarily revealed Himself in history through His chosen people.

A few years back at a convention of the European Agudath Israel in Bournemouth it suddenly struck me that the one theme that kept coming out in one way or another in every speech was the absolute confidence that the whole world hinges on what happens to the “smallest of the nations.” That assurance is perhaps the most important gift that Torah Jews can offer to the broader Jewish world.

True there are ugly ways to express this superiority. When we speak derogatorily of gentiles and use disparaging terms to refer to them we become like the young boy in Rav Yisrael Salanter’s mashal who seeks to make himself taller than his fellow by pushing him down. Such behavior bespeaks not elevation but its opposite and demonstrate our failure to appreciate the tzelem Elokim in every human being. And I might add that the path of potential baalei teshuvah toward full religious observance has been cut short by hearing racial or ethnic epithets used casually by a religious Jew.

When asked whether he believes in American “exceptionalism” President Obama answered that he did just like every Englishman believes in English exceptionalism and every Frenchman believes in French exceptionalism. That response was generally and I think correctly understood as an elaborate way of saying “No.” And that is exactly how I heard Ms. Sheleg’s denial to the Jewish People of anything other than being “unique ” just like every other nation is “unique.” Perhaps the greatest cost of an infatuation with the “wisdom of the nations ” is the loss of any sense of our own chosenness and the centrality of our mission to all of history.

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Two weeks ago I wrote about the wisdom of sometimes turning a blind eye to our children’s behavior that does not find favor in our eyes and granting them a little more rein than we may feel comfortable doing. The Shabbos after finishing that piece my wife and I were in Tzfas and we ran into Rabbi Moshe Reich whom I had once interviewed for a biography of the Klausenberger Rebbe ztz”l. The Reich family members were among the Rebbe’s closest talmidim. Needless to say we got to talking about the Rebbe and Reb Moshe told me a powerful story about the Rebbe related to the point I had made.

After the war the Rebbe went from DP camp to DP camp gathering youngsters. Many had lost their faith in the torment of what they went through and were teetering on the brink of giving up religious observance entirely. The Rebbe approached one teenager who he knew came from a chassidic family and urged him to join him. The boy refused. “I want to go to movies” he told the Rebbe “and if I go with you I won’t be able to go to movies.”

The Rebbe replied “Not at all. You can go to as many movies as you want. And I’ll even pay.” A few days later the teenager decided to test the Rebbe. He went to him and told him that there was a movie he wanted to see in a town about twenty kilometers away. The Rebbe immediately took out the money for the movie and transportation and gave it to him. A few minutes later the Rebbe called the teenager back to him. “Maybe you’ll also get thirsty at the movie ” the Rebbe said. “Here’s money to buy a drink.”

Years later the boy related how he had cried all the way to the cinema but had forced himself to watch the entire show. But that was the last movie he ever went to. (I trust that readers will understand that I’m not suggesting any comparison between how parents should act today and the way the Rebbe acted with his great wisdom and understanding with respect to the broken souls he brought back to life after the war. But the general principles are still relevant today.)

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Al Gore Jr. the high priest of global warming hysteria admitted at an Athens conference for clean energy financiers in late November that massive government subsidies to producers of ethanol for blending into gasoline make no sense. For once Gore is right. (Ironically as vice president Gore cast the decisive 1994 Senate vote against repeal of an Enviromental Protection Agency-imposed mandate for ethanol in gasoline.)

Ethanol blends according to Australian academic Robert Niven produce more harmful toxins than regular gasoline. They also reduce fuel efficiency causing consumers to purchase more gasoline. And the energy required to produce ethanol-blended gasoline results in the release of almost as much air-borne carbon as the use of ethanol reduces. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers spend $1.78 to replace every gallon of regular gasoline by a gallon of corn ethanol. Using some generous assumptions it concludes that it takes $750 for every metric ton of carbon kept out of the atmosphere. By way of comparison the carbon offset company Terrapass values a metric ton of emissions at $5.95.

Yet six billion dollars in ethanol subsidies remain in the tax bill just passed by Congress. That inclusion demonstrates once again how hard it is to get rid of any government program no matter how costly and inefficient once powerful lobbies have developed in support. It also demonstrates that even after the Tea Party legislators are very far from showing the will for urgently needed budget cuts. Ethanol subsidies should have been low-hanging fruit.

The more than two-decade experience with ethanol-blended gasoline also highlights once again the law of unintended consequences — the bigger and less-tested the governmental panacea the more likely the unforeseen consequences. Besides harming consumers through a massive hike in gas prices ethanol subsidies have resulted in higher world food prices by raising the cost of corn and corn feed. Currently 40 percent of US corn production is diverted to ethanol. It is the poorest members of society upon whom the burden of higher gas and food prices falls most heavily.

Finally the ethanol subsidy teaches us to be a mite suspicious of the pure altruism of all those seeking to save the planet. Gore admits that one of the reasons for his former strong advocacy of ethanol through the 1990s was his special fondness for Iowa farmers who would be voting in the first Democratic primary in 2000 — a primary crucial to Gore’s presidential bid that year.