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A Book Review |
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Books shape us. They change our road choices, confirm (or demolish) our ideas, lead toward or away from God.
Chaim Potok, The Chosen This novel is about two Jewish teenagers growing up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, during and after the Second World War. Both are studying to become rabbis. Reuven Malter is the son of a yeshiva teacher who holds (in the eyes of Orthodox Jews) modernist, heretical views on Judaism and Jewish texts. Danny Saunders is the son of a Polish hasidic rebbe who fled the Shoah and brought his followers to America. The boys help one another choose a path of service from within each other's context. The book provides memorable insight into the conflictions of American Jewish realities and Holocaust-era European Hasidism. With an artist's eye, Potok vividly depicts an intense baseball game between Reuven and Danny's teams, where the two meet for the first time. Later, he weaves into his narrative a survey of the history of Hasidism and the rise of the so-called "tzaddik" (chap. 6), and memorably portrays a Shabbat afternoon "quiz" between Danny and his father (a tzaddik himself) on the meanings of Talmud passages (chap. 7). In, chap. 14 he defines the Mishnah and Talmud for readers. Throughout, Potok repeats visual sub-themes: light/dark, white clothes/black clothes, blue eyes/black eyes/blindness. A major theme is Silence, expressed in this brief dialogue between Reuven and Danny: "My father doesn't write," Danny said. "He reads a lot, but he never writes. He says that words distort what a person really feels in his heart. He doesn't like to talk too much, either. Oh, he talks plenty when we're studying Talmud together. But otherwise he doesn't say much. He told me once he wishes everyone could talk in silence."Later in the story, Reuven tells his father about the painful ordeal Danny went through in the synagogue headed by his father, Reb Saunders. The father had tested his son's knowledge of Talmud by grilling him before the men of the congregation. The purpose of the exercise, in part, is to prove Danny's knowledge and ability to become a Talmudic authority and eventually take over as the head of his father's Hasidic dynasty. "It was an experience, abba. The way Danny had to answer his father's questions like that in front of everybody. I thought that was terrible." Danny does not want to secede his father. He wants to become a psychologist; an act of betrayal to Hasidism in the eyes of his father. This tension is central to the book. Ironically, it is Reuven who helps Reb Saunders accept the "loss" of his son to the outside world: outside Hasidism. In the end, his father relents, accepting Danny's promise to remain loyal to Torah. After high school, Danny enters college to learn psychology and Reuven enters seminary to become a rabbi. In the psychologically tormenting sequel, The Promise (1969), Danny's graduate training is tested severely by the problems of an adolescent boy who is a cousin to Reuven's girlfriend. A film version of The Chosen came out in 1981, starring Robby Benson as Danny.
Chaim Potok (1929—2002) was born Herman Harold Potok in Brooklyn, New York, to a deeply religious Jewish immigrant family from Poland, which had strong ties to Hasidism. He wanted to be a painter but his father said painting was a gentile occupation, so he turned to writing. His book My Name is Asher Lev reflects his knowledgable passion for art.
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