For a story so
concerned with the American Jewish experience, Chaim Potok's The Chosen has
universal appeal. In depicting the friendship of two boys, the
relationship of fathers and sons, conflicts between faith and culture,
and the search to find one's place in opposition to parental dictates, it conveys feelings to which every reader can relate.
Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders live only five blocks apart in 1940s
Brooklyn but might as well be hundreds of miles apart, so different are
their separate strains of Judaism. They meet at age 15 on opposing
teams in a softball game, during which Danny hits a ball that injures
Reuven. The incident turns out to be fortuitous: The two begin to forge
a friendship that will help each of them mature and discover their
callings in life.
Danny's ultraconservative father, Reb Saunders, expects him to become a
Hasidic rabbi (a tzaddik) like himself, and Danny dreads telling him
that he wants to be a psychologist. For spiritual reasons
— he wants to teach Danny about suffering
through denial — Saunders doesn't even speak to Danny except during Talmudic
study.
Reuven's widowed father, David Malther, is also an observant Jew, but
he is more secular, a gentle teacher and writer who is rational about scripture and passionate for a Jewish
state. Malther also contrasts with Saunders in how he relates to his
son. In long conversations the two discuss just about everything.
The story continues until the boys' college years, through the
discovery of Hitler's concentration camps and the establishment of
Israel. It offers an accessible lesson on Jewish history and
traditions. Potok himself came out of a Hasidic Jewish community in New
York. He moved to the less orthodox Conservative Judaism and, like The Chosen's
narrator Reuven, became a rabbi. After The Chosen
introduced the American public to the Jewish experience, Potok went on
to write more novels with Jewish protagonists as well as Wanderings: Chaim
Potok's History of the Jews (1978).
.
Home
My
reviews
My
friends' reviews