An excerpt from the excellent article:
Why did you choose the title "The Chosen Few"? Don't you feel it may create misunderstandings?
We explain the meaning of this title in the book's introduction. But instead of repeating here what is clear throughout the book, let us communicate another positive message that our book intends to spread: in the world of almost universal illiteracy back 2,000 years, the Jewish religious leadership -- the rabbis and scholars in the academies in Judea and Galilee -- required each Jewish individual, child or adult, rich or poor, farmer or merchant, to learn to read and study the Torah. Instead of restricting learning, study and knowledge to a small elite, the Jewish religious leadership of that time went exactly in the opposite direction: it pushed Judaism toward making literacy, education and knowledge universal among all Jews. Centuries later, this apparently odd choice of a religious norm became the lever of the economic prosperity and intellectual achievements of the Jews.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/business...e-road-to.html
Why did you choose the title "The Chosen Few"? Don't you feel it may create misunderstandings?
We explain the meaning of this title in the book's introduction. But instead of repeating here what is clear throughout the book, let us communicate another positive message that our book intends to spread: in the world of almost universal illiteracy back 2,000 years, the Jewish religious leadership -- the rabbis and scholars in the academies in Judea and Galilee -- required each Jewish individual, child or adult, rich or poor, farmer or merchant, to learn to read and study the Torah. Instead of restricting learning, study and knowledge to a small elite, the Jewish religious leadership of that time went exactly in the opposite direction: it pushed Judaism toward making literacy, education and knowledge universal among all Jews. Centuries later, this apparently odd choice of a religious norm became the lever of the economic prosperity and intellectual achievements of the Jews.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/business...e-road-to.html