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CHAIM POTOKS SELECT FICTION: A CRITICAL STUDY

JEWS STRUGGLE FOR IDENTITY AS A NATION
AN INTRODUCTION
JEWS AND THEIR DESIRE
This thesis is aimed at describing the struggles faced by the Jews to prove their
identity. From the beginning, the Jews claim to be a chosen people, their refusal worship
other Gods, and their insistence on special religious laws placed them in a position and
gave them the label alienated species. In the ancient Roman Empire, very few Jews were
admitted to Roman citizenship. Early Christians held the Jews responsible for the
crucifixion of Christ; an allegation that became the justification of antipathy towards Jews
for many centuries.
The middle ages were dominated by Christians, which further aggravated the
desolation of the Jews. Periodic persecution of Jews occurred. By the end of the 15 th
century, the inquisition put to trial Jews and other non conformists in Spain, culminating in
the expulsion of Jews from the country. A number of Jews, however, became Christians in
order to remain in Spain, but they continued to practice Judaism secretly. They referred to
as Marranos, a pejorative which meant pig.
At about the same time, similar oppressive measures were enforced in England,
France and Germany. Jews were also forced to live in ghettos. Outside the gates they were
obliged to wear an identifying badge reducing them to the status of an outcast. The
harassment of the Jews did not stop there; they were pursued by successions of Crusades,
by the restrictions of the church council, the hatred churchmen and Jewbaiters. In 1860, it
the AustrianJewish scholarMoritz Steinschneiderwho referred to Jewish hatred as
antisemitic prejudices to characterise the idea that Semitic races were inferior to Aryan
races.
In the 19thcentury, the holocaust was a racial Anti-Semitism practised by Adolf
Hitler. The pogroms in Russia and Nazism on territories captured Hilter acused a mass
immigration to the U.S and the establishmet of colonies in Palestine. Though they found
their golden land in the U.S, their strict adherence to their traditon and beliefs still

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marginalised them as an alienated or a separate cult. The young generation of Jews found it
difficult to strike a balance between their tradition and modernity in the New World.
Though they were content growing up within Jewish religion and culture, they sensed that
there existed a world beyond their Jewish one, a secular world of freedom and
opportunities where they could receive unbiased treatment.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Chaim Potok is not only a prolific writer of Jewish origins but also a Jewish rabbi
and a painter as well. His works present Jewish life and Judaism from the point of view of
an observant Jew. His insights are from the inside of the Hasidic Jewish community, where
one becomes part of the Jewish community through his special works. Judaism is at the
heart of Potoks works. At the early age of ten he showed talent in drawing and painting but
was dissuaded by his father and his teachers from pursuing this interest. Instead, he
undertook a serious religious and secular education, first at the Orthodox Yeshiva
University, New York, where he received a BA in English in 1950; then at the
Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, where he received his Rabbinic
ordination in 1954; and finally at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a PhD
in 1965.
Chaim Potak is famous as an American-Jewish writer. He writes about Jewish
communities and the individuals who dwell with orthodox ideas and non-orthodox Jews
also with them. Although the famous statue in Jewish history of the patriarch Abraham and
the lawgiver Moses, the Jews have not historically been known as Abrahamites or the
children of Moses. Really, they are Israelites- the heirs of Abrahams grandson who really
was called Jacob and later was renamed Israel.
In the Genesis narratives, Jacob is a multi-faceted figure - father, rogue, husband and
also mystic - who most famously sires the sons who become the progenitors of the
traditional 12 tribes. And in his works of the twentieth century Jewish-American novelist
Chaim Potok, Jacob reappears, although not in his biblical persona. Beginning with the
1967 best seller the Chosen and continuing with the number of other novels, Potok creates
a series of young Jewish protagonists whose conservative religious culture flashes with
elements of the broader western society.

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In studies in Classic American literature (1924), D.H.Lawrence writes, In true art
there is always the double rhythm of creating and destroying (P.68). In 1967 when Chaim
Potok, rabbi, scholar, artist and writer, published his first novel The Chosen, he began a
systematic exploration and development of the important themes of Jewish-American
cultural confrontation that have continued through his seven subsequent novels. In his
creativity Potok has been led to destroy conventional assumptions about what Judaism is
and its place in American life; instead of concentrating on the Jew as trekker to America or
European immigrant, Potok examines his Jewish characters as religious clusters, skeptics,
visionaries and mentors. For Potok, the process of story-telling revises Judaism as a way
of being and believing the life. Potok carefully explores the seemingly desperate orthodox,
Hasidic, and more liberal expressions of Jewish tradition, and this style naturally represents
something new in American literature. Furthermore, Potok is the first American novelist to
demonstrate that, writing about Jewish theology, liturgy, history and scholarship is
appropriate to the genre of the American Novel. (S.Lillian Kremer, Chaim Potok P.232)
Strictly speaking, Potok has shown special enthusiasm in exhibiting that the AmericanJewish community is a combination of many people whose origin is different. Here it is apt
to look at the origin of Jewish community.
THE ORIGINS OF JEWISH COMMUNITY
The year 1881 is actually said to be a turning point in the history of the Jews as
decisive as that of 70A.D. It was the time when Titus legions burned the temple at
Jerusalem. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed the expulsion from Spain. On March
first 1881, Alexander II, Czar of Russia was assassinated by revolutionary terrorists; the
modest liberalism of his regime came to an end; and within several weeks a wave of
pogroms inspired mostly by agents of the new government, spread across Russia.
For the Jews packed into the Pale and overflowing its boundaries, the accession of
Alexander III signified not only immediate disaster but also the need for a gradual
reordering of both their inner life and their relationship to a country in which Jews had
been living for hundreds of years. The question had then to be asked was should the East
European Jews continue to regard themselves as permanent residents of the Russian empire
or should they seriously consider the possibility of a new exodus?

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To speak truth, there had already been a trickle of Jewish emigration to America 7500 in the years between 1820 and 1870 and somewhat more than 40,000 in the 1870s.
But the idea of America as a possible locale for collective renewal had not yet sunk deeply
into the consciousness of the east European Jews. During the reign of Alexander II many of
them had experienced modest hopes of winning equal rights as common citizens. Others
hoped to pursue the less benighted agents of Russian autocracy that the Jews merited a
share in its prospective enlightenment. By the 1880s that hope was badly shaken, perhaps
was totally destroyed
JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA FROM EASTERN EUROPE
For several hundreds of years this culture had flourished in Eastern Europe. Bound
together by firm spiritual ties by a common language and by a sense of destiny that often
meant a sharing of martyrdom; the Jews of Eastern Europe was a kind of nation yet without
recognized its nationhood. Theirs was both a community and a society; internally a
community, a ragged kingdom of the spirit, and external a society impoverished and
imperiled.
The central trait of this culture was an orientation towards other worldly values,
though this may be too simple a way of describing it. For the world of the East European
Jews, at least in its most serious and ideal ministrations, did not accept the Western
distinction between worldly and other worldly. Kierkegaards dictum that between God
and man there is an infinite, yawning, qualitative difference might have struck them as a
reasonable account of their actual condition, but not as a statement of necessary or
inescapable limits. In order to survive, the East European Jews had to abide by the
distinction between the worldly and the other worldly, but they refused to recognize it as
just or inevitable.
In their celebration of the Sabbath and in the sharp line they drew between the
Sabbath and the rest of the week, they tacitly acknowledged that they had to live by the
ways of the world; this was the price of exile and dispersion. Ideally, however, the worldly
and the other worldly should be one i.e. Here on earth. Every Jew would have recognized
immediately the symbolic rightness in the refusal of Rebshloyme, a character in Peretzs

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drama Di golden keyt (The Golden Chain), to accept the week, those six mundane days
that lie scattered beneath the glory of the Sabbath. (World of our Fathers P.8)
The life of the east European Jews was certainly an ideal one. Given the pressures
from without and a slow stagnation within, this world was bound to contain large portions
of the ignorant, provincial and even corrupt. The picture scythed here of east European
Jewish life is necessarily a static one; the reality was of course, full of internal conflict and
change. Jewish life in east Europe, it can reasonably be said that it had been stagnant for
centuries, in the sense, first, that the rabbinate had maintained its power and become more
rigid in outlook and, second, that the relationship of the Russian empire remained one of
the weaknesses and also dependence. Yet there had been upheavals and convulsions too.
In the seventh century the false messianic of Sabbatai Zevi had shaken the Jews in a
paroxysm of antinomian desire, which the Yiddish writer Hayim Greenberg has described it
as, The absolute negation of the Galut (Diaspora) and all its manifestations, the revulsion
was against the continued passive waiting for redemption, the stubborn refusal to be
reconciled to the hobbled reality of Jewish life. (P.10)
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Hasidism, a movement of
pietistic enthusiasm drawing upon the aspirations of pluvial Jews swept across Eastern
Europe to brighten its spiritual life. And in the nineteenth century the Haskala, or
enlightenment, brought modern thought to at least the middle-class segments of the Jewish
population.
The greatest formant came, however, in the last third of the nineteenth century. A
phalanx of new political and cultural movements, all competing for intellectual hegemony
in the Jewish world; a generation of thoughtful, and in some instances, distinguished
intellectuals; an upsurge of the Jewish message to social awareness, revolt, and selfeducation; the blossoming of a secular Yiddish literature which, at its very beginning, thrust
out such major figures Shalom Aleichem and I. L Peretz; above all, the widespread feeling
in both the shtetl and city that Jewish culture had again come alive and certainly all these
were signs of renascence.

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As long as the authority of the rabbis was supreme and east European Jewry
remained self-sufficient in its religious life, a secular culture could not flourish. It could
hardly be envisaged. But under the impact of the European enlightenment, especially that
of Germany, change could be seen. After the internal fissures produced by competing
movements of Jewish revival, including some within the tradition itself, such as Musar, an
effort at ethical purification within the limits of orthodoxy, through the appearance of such
worldly movements as Zionism, socialism, and various blends of the two, the Jews were
really more comfortable. In short, as a result of the confluence of this and other forces, the
east European Jews turned to the idea of secular expression. Turned, one might say, with
religious intensity to the idea of secular expression.
For several centuries the rabbis, intent upon reserving, the ancient Jewish faith,
had served as armor for the Jewish people in their struggle for national existence. Not
many rabbis would have acknowledged so mundane an end, but there is historical evidence
that they did have some awareness of their distinctive social role.
When, for example, Jewish reformers under Haskala influence proposed changes in
the schooling of the young, the rabbis resisted such schemes on the grounds that even a
partially secularized education would deprive Jewish youth of traditional ways of life
without really enabling them to find a place in the gentile world. Motives apart, the rabbis
were speaking to a reality.
Had the persecution and poverty of the late nineteenth century occurred at a time of
cultural stagnation or even stability, it would probably have led to the sort of internal
convulsions that had previously broken out among the east European Jews. Perhaps a new
version of the original would have been seen. But between 17 th and 18th centuries, perhaps a
new phase in the ecstatic Pietism of Hasidism was observed. An unforeseeable religious
outburst started. Had the cultural renewal of the east European Jews occurred in relatively
normal circumstances, without the bounds of external assault and internal hunger,
Yiddishke might have established itself as the stable culture of a minority people slowly
undergoing that process of assimilation that would later occur in the US.
`But what now uniquely characterized the east European Jews was the explosive
mixture of mounting wretchedness and increasing hope, physical suffer in and spiritual
exaltation. And what was new in their experience was that for the first time they could

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suppose there was some place else to go, a new world perceived as radically different from
the one in which they had been living.
The spiraling energy, strength, hope, dream of the European Jews enabled many of
their sons and daughters to make their escape to America, sometimes for mere personal
relief, often with the wish for a fulfillment of those collective aspirations which have been
unuttered but could not be realized in the old country. America, even as it drained millions
of Jews from Shtewtl and city, helped the Jews of Eastern Europe to survive and for
intervals and even flourish as a community. America was safety wall and haven, place for
renewal and source of support.
Serious debates were bound to arise as to whether immigration should now become
a communal policy. As early as 1882 a conference of Jewish notables met in Saint
Petersburg to discuss this question. The majority of the delegates cleared that mass
emigration, officially encouraged by the Jewish community, would appear unpatriotic and
might undermine the struggle for emancipation. Russky Everei, a Russian-language weekly
edited by Jews, wrote:
Pogroms are a result of rightlessness and when that has been
obviated the attendant evils will vanish with it. By supporting
massimmigration the Jews would be playing into the hands of
their enemies who hope they will flee from the field of
battle. (P.25)
In the 33 years between the assassination of Alexander II and the outbreak of the First
World War, approximately one third of the east European Jews left their homelands. Rather
a migration comparable in modern Jewish history only to the flight from the Spanish
inquisition. Some with the blood of the Pogroms barely dry, fled in fear for their lives;
others chose to leave in organized groups searching for a new soil in which to replant
Jewish life; most went for personal reasons, to ease lives that had become intolerable and
release ambitions long suppressed. Yet, in its deepest significance, the migration of the east
European Jews constituted a spontaneous and collective impulse, perhaps even decision, by
a people that had come to recognize the need for new modes and possibilities of life.
Circumstances often made it unavoidable that the Jews flee from Russia, Poland and
Romania; Circumstances sometimes made it convenient for them to leave; but the impetus
and the desire were their own. They moved westward not only because life was hard under
the Czar but because elements of strength had been forged in the Jewish communities and

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flashes of hope sent back by brother who had already completed the journey. They moved
westward because they clung to the dream of national fulfillment while hoping individually
to gain some decencies of survival. (P.27.)
The first major exodus began during the summer of 1881, when thousands of
refugees, in flight from pogroms that had spread across the whole of the Ukraine, poured
into Brody. Starving and homeless, sometimes forced to sleep on the streets and treated for
less well by the Austrian authorities than the legends about Franz-Josef had led them to
expect, these refugees presented a problem not merely for the Jewish community of Brody,
obviously unable to care for them, but for the entire Jewish population of Europe. Clinging
to their acrid pride even in wretchedness, the east European Jews had harsh things to say
about their more prosperous west European brothers.
Yet the west European Jewish communities, through such agencies as the Baron de
Hirsch fund and the Alliance Israelite universal, did help. Their responses were inadequate
and, given the scope of the migration from the east, could hardly be anything but
inadequate. But relief poured into Brody, refugees were enabled to travel to Hamburg and
Bremen, quarters were set up- often miserable, but set up in the ports.
In Paris a committee headed by Victor Hugo organized a public protest against the
pogroms and liberal news papers undertook subscriptions to aid the refugees. The world, or
at least a few decent portions of it, could still be moved by the sight of thousands of victims
perhaps because it had not yet become hardened to the sight of millions.
In the spring of 1882, after renewed pogroms in Russia, fresh streams of victims
poured into Brody, which had now become a magnet for all the helpless who had heard of
the relief and immigration depots in that town. During the early months of 1882, there were
perhaps twenty thousand refugees clustered in Brody, which normally had a population of
no more than fifteen thousand; and what had at first been envisaged as a limited relief
operation by the Alliance now began to confront the Jews of Europe as the task of coping
with a mass exodus.
During the next few years permanent agencies, especially, after 1900, the
Hilfsvereinder and the Deutschen Juden were created to help the east Europeans on their
way. In view of the strained relations that would continue for decades between German and
east European Jews, it is only fair to record that the German Jews worked hard and often
well in behalf of the thousands pouring in from the east.

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They established information bureaus to help the travelers; they negotiated special
rates with railway companies and steamship lines; they set up precautions against the
hordes of scoundrels, both Jewish and gentile, who tried to fleece the emigrants; they
negotiated with governments to ease the journeys. In the peak decade of immigration 1905
to 1914, some seven lakh east European Jews passed through Germany and two lakh and
ten thousand of these were directly helped by the Hilfsverein. Mark Wischnitzer, a historian
of immigration close to the institution created by east European Jewish immigrants,
acknowledges that the German Jewish community always borne the brunt of the tidal
wave of immigration from east Europe.
Before 1900 its work was inadequate; orderly migration requires a long and through
preparation by experts in the field. The voluntary committee of the nineteenth century
created adhoc, were simply unable to perform this work. Later, things improved but the
problem grew larger. Between 1901 and 1914 the number of Jews who left Europe, almost
all of them were from Russia, Rmania, and Galicia, came to 1, 602,441. A leader of the
German effort to help the emigrant Jews, Dr. Paul Nathen, came to the conclusion that in
the period of 1900-1903 ninety percent of them went forth each year on their own
initiative and at their own risk.
Even an imaginative American, writes a Jewish memoirist, must find it very hard
to form anything like a just idea of the tremendous adventure involved in the act of
immigration. Tremendous adventure, yes, but only if that term comprehends a rich share
of misery and trauma. The misery of journeying to America is by now a familiar story, but
the trauma of undertaking the journey is often suppressed. The purposefulness of AM
Olam, the bravado of the elating or exhilarating, but for more frequent were the wrenching
of personal ties, the tearing away of sons distraught mothers and grim fathers.
Young men were eager to escape, but were shaken by the thought of a lifelong
separation. They would cultivate a secret ally, mother against father or father against
mother, appealing to hopes that both shared but one was readier to act upon than the other.
My father remembered Stanislaw Mozrowski, a Jew from Montenejro, Would not even
let me talk to him about my hopes. My place he said emphatically was at home. Once in a
while my mother would feel that he was in good mood - Wives can sense these things - and
she would look at him put her finger over her mouth as if to say dont say anything , let
me do the talking, and start by remaking about something I had done well, and of course

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he would agree. Then she would begin to talk about my future. He would immediately
stiffen, but sometimes she would continue until he would pound on the table and yell,
silence! No more do you hear?(World of Our Fathers P.34.)
For those without legal passports, the first major crisis along the journey was the
border crossing into Austria or Germany. Bands of smugglers, increasingly expert, worked
on the fears of the immigrants. The imagination of these Jews was stirred and disordered;
removed from the small circle of space in which they had spent their lives; they became
easy prey to rapacious peasants and heartless fellow Jews. Only when they came under the
guidance of the German-Jewish organizations in Berlin, Hamborg, and Bremen could they
be shielded from sharpers and thieves. Abraham Cahans of his 1882 crossing of the
Austrian border is classic; We were to leave the train at Dubno where we were to take a
wagon through the region around Radzivil on our way to the Austrian border.(P.36.)
Was the Atlantic crossing really as dreadful as memoirists and legend have made it
out to be? Were the food rotten, the treatment as harsh, and the steerage as sickening? One
thing seems certain; to have asked such questions of a representative portion of Jews who
came to America between 1881 and 1914 would have elicited stares of disbelief, suspicions
as to motive, perhaps worse. The imagery of the journey as ordeal was deeply imprinted in
the Jewish folk mind - admittedly, a mind with a rich training in the imagery of ordeal.
Whatever could be eased in trauma of arrival, the Jewish community tried to ease.
When the immigrants reached Ellis Island, they found waiting for them not only the
authorities with unnerving questions, but also their friendlier faces of Hias representatives.
Hias is one of the few Jewish agencies that over the decades have been praised by almost
every segment of the American Jewish world-no small feat in a community that has been
notoriously contentious. It was also one of the first major institutions in America set up and
administered by east European Jews on their own.
The sheer magnitude of immigration from Europe during the last third of the
nineteenth century made it that old-stock Americans, even if favouring in principle and
open door for aliens, would begin to feel uncomfortable. From the vantage point of
distance, what seems remarkable is not the extent of antiforeigner sentiment that swept the
country but the fact that until the first world war it did not seriously impede the flow of
immigration.
In the 1860s and 1870s, when cheap labour was needed by the rail roads and both
western and southern states were eager to absorb white settlers, American business interests

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sent special agents to Europe in order to attract immigrants. Popular sentiment remained
attached to the notion that America was uniquely the land of refuge from tyranny and a
country were fixed class lines gradually softened. Jews, to be sure, were already
encountering social discrimination in the 1870s, some of it due to feeling that the recent
immigrants from Germany unlikelier refined Sephardic cousins who had been here for a
long time, were too loud and pushy in their social ascent.
For the most part, however there was not yet any large-scale articulation of antiSemitic prejudice, only because the Jews did not yet figure in the popular imagination as a
major force in American life. Only during the last two decades of the century did the
multiplication of aliens come to seem a national problem. Historians of immigration have
distinguished, with rough usefulness, between old and new immigrants, the former
mostly from northern and latter from southern and eastern Europe.
Close in cultural style protestant American, the old immigrants seemed more easily
assailable and there by less threatening than the new. By the 80s and 90s the mass influx
consisted largely of new immigrants, ill-educated and often illiterate peasants whose
manner could unnerve Native Americans. And most immigrant Jews were regarded as
among the new.
Although the several decades between the early 80s and the first world war, a
struggle took place in American society between the partisans of free immigration and
advocates of restrictions. Partly to regulate and mainly to limit immigration, a series of acts
were passed by congress though, more important from the stand point of those who wished
to enable the Jews to find refuge in the United States, most of the proposals for radically
cutting down the number of immigrants were beaten back.
The most difficult questions remain: who came? Which Jews? Rich or poor, city or
shtelt, old or young, religious or secular? Are there verifiable distinctions of character,
sensibility, opinion, and condition to be observed between those who remained and those
who left? And were there differences between the kinds of Jews who came to America in
the 1880s and those who came in the first decade of the twentieth century? All these
questions remain unanswered.
Strictly speaking, like most truly interesting historical questions, these do not lend
themselves to convenient answers. Few statistics and those usually inadequate, were kept
among the east European Jews. (Many evaded legal registration in order to save their sons
from the draft; others drifted about so much they were probably never counted.) In the

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United States, immigration statistics prior to 1899 were classified by country of nativity ,
not by race, religion, or nationality, so that with regard to the last 2 decades of the century
students of Jewish immigration such as Samuel Joseph and Liebmann Hersch could do no
more than work up estimates.
Even the statistics for the years after 1899 did not provide answers to many questions
one would like to ask - and in regard to the replies Jewish immigrants gave about their
occupations, a decided skepticism is in order. There was certainly ambiguity among the
people. Each questioned to self Where was I to go? An awkward, unkempt, timid youth of
16, with the inevitable bundles, I dumbly inquired my way from the Battery to the slums
The only vantage point I had was an address on the letter my uncle had given me to
deliver to a friend of his. I showed this to an officer who sent me in the direction of the East
Side. I probably could have done it without an address, for where else did immigrant Jews
congregate?
In the early eighties the Jewish quarter was still small with much of the East Side
under the control of Irish and German immigrants. East Broadway, in those days was an
imposing avenue with wide sidewalks and distinguished homes. It was often called ulitza
(the Russian word for street) because the Jewish intellectuals who made it their center felt
it was more cultivated to speak Russian than Yiddish.
NEW JEWISH COMMUNITY:
Over the centuries they had accumulated a rich experience in living as a minority
within a hostile culture. True enough for the Jewish immigrant experience as a hole, this
observation needs qualification in regard to the eighties and nineties. During these early
years, the nerves of the immigrant community were constantly exacerbated, frequently to
breaking point. What might see is the most trivial problems signaled a need for major
adjustment. A common theme in immigrant memoirs is the way family life suffered
disruption because wives, daughters, husbands, and sons went to work in different times of
the day, making it impossible for members of a family to eat together.
Their life-style or the tempo of life in America, its intensity hurry, struck Morris
Raphael Cohen as one of the major forces shattering traditional Jewish decorum. At 6
oclock in the morning, remembered Cohen, the alarm would wake us all up. His
mother would prepare breakfast, his father says the morning prayers after snatching a bit of
food, and then both father and old brother leave so as to be in the shop by seven. Alarm
clocks were simple, even useful objects, yet they signified an entirely new world outlook.

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What does one do here for a livelihood? asked an immigrants in the eighties who
had been a maskil, or learned man, in Russia. You do what everyone does, came the
reply, you become a peddler. With a pack on his back and a garland of tin ware hanging
from my shoulders, I began crawling up and down the stairs. (P.77.)
In the soft glow of retrospect there has been a tendency among American Jews to
donate peddling with certain glamour. Sometimes, perhaps, with reason: as in the stories
that have come down to us of Jews wandering into small southern towns and being treated
as if they had just stepped out of the Old Testament. But in the cities of the north, during
the years of industrial expansion, peddling was backbreaking and soul-destroying work.
There was only one reason to become a peddler: you had no skill and wanted to stay out of
the shops.
Was there no way for Jewish immigrants to escape both peddling and the sweatshop?
A few hundred zealots, organized in Russia during the early eighties as Am Olam (external
people), sought a radical escape from the economic rootlessness which centuries had
imposed on the Jews. Am Olam proposed to establish farm co-operatives in America so as
to (normalize) Jewish life which meant to abandon petty trade and the roll of middle man?
Some wanted to build socialist agricultural communes, anticipating the Israeili kibbutz,
while others were concerned mainly with national rehabilitation through a strengthening of
the Jewish economic fabric. To the goal of founding Fcolonies in the spirit of Robert
owen, Fourier, and Tolstoy the Am Olam movement brought the religious fervor that
would mark so many Jewish political movements.
Just north of Canal Street and extending from Mott to Elizabeth stood the Big Flat,
an enormous tenement occupying six city lots. Water was supplied to tenants from one tap
on each floor, set over a sink outside the north wall. These sinks, serving as the only
receptacles for refuse, were loathsome, especially in the winter, when the traps beneath
them would freeze. Each apartment had three rooms and drew its light from a single
window in the living room. The two inner rooms were always dark and without
ventilation, since the space allotted each resident averaged out to 428 cubic feet per head,
far below the legal limit of 600. The annual death rate per 1000 for the years 1883, 1884,
1885 and the first nine months of 1886 came to 42.40, as compared with 25.72 for the city
as a hole; nearly 62 percent of the deaths in the Big Flat were of children under 5 years
of age, while in the city as a whole the percentage was a bit more than 42.

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The Jews ( also some Italians) living in the Big Flat, reported on investigator of
the New York Association for Improving the Conditions of the poor, are locked in the
rooms like sardines in a box. The ghetto Jew in Europe created a stocked culture, centered
around his religion and thought in his holy tongue. Through the dark ages the ghetto was
bright with literacy; and Jewish knowledge was as good as anything the outside offered, or
better. There was no enlightenment, because there was little enlightenment to be had. (P.87)
All this changed with the coming of Galileo and Newton, of Bacon and Voltaire, of
Copernicus and Descartes. There were blazing suns outside the ghetto. Light shafted
through the heavy timbers of the stocked. The first reaction of the leaders inside was to seal
every chink and try to shut out the light. Whether this was an inevitable reaction or the
mistake of week vision can be argued. But it happened.
It is not hard to imagine the state of mind of the leaders. The impact of the new
learning on the painfully won, smooth-running ghetto culture would, they feared, be
destructive. The preservation of that culture was a life-or-death matter. Modernism had
been suspect ever since Maimonides had thrown Jewry into two-century turmoil. The
rabbis heard the rumors that the new learning was laying waste to Christian piety. They
took up a delaying action. It was instinct.
They could not have foreseen the catastrophe of their policy. Nothing in their
experience allowed for the freeing of the Jews. But the new ideas of the Renaissance, the
liberalism of the eighteenth century is said to be a significant factor in history.

The

twentieth century witnessed the emergence of American Jewry on the world Jewish scene.
As the century opened, the United States, with about one million Jews, was the third largest
Jewish population centre in the world, following Russia and Austria-Hungary. About half
of the countrys Jews lived in New York City alone, making it the worlds most populous
Jewish community by far, more than twice as large as its nearest rival, Warsaw, Poland. By
contrast, just half a century earlier, the United States had been home to barely 50,000 Jews
and New York's Jewish population had stood at about 16,000.
Immigration provided the principal fuel behind this extraordinary American Jewish
population boom. In 1900, more than 40 percent of America's Jews were newcomers, with
ten years or less in the country, and the largest immigration wave still lay ahead. Between

15
1900 and 1924, another 1.75 million Jews would immigrate to Americas shores, the bulk
from Eastern Europe. Whereas before 1900, American Jews never amounted even to 1
percent of Americas total population, by 1930 Jews formed about 3 percent. There were
more Jews in America by then than there were Episcopalians or Presbyterians.
This massive population transfer radically transformed the character of the American
Jewish community. It reshaped its composition and geographical distribution, resulting in a
heavy concentration of Jews in East Coast cities, including some (like Boston) where Jews
had never lived in great numbers before. It also realigned as American Jewrys politics and
priorities, injecting new elements of tradition, nationalism, and socialism into Jewish
communal life, and seasoning its culture with liberal dashes of East European Jewish
folkways. Although the American Jewish community retained significant elements from its
German and Sephardic pasts (Sephardic Jews having originated in Spain and Portugal), the
traditions of East European Jews and their descendants dominated the community. With
their numbers and through their achievements, they raised its status both nationally and
internationally.
World War I confirmed American Jewrys new status in world Jewish affairs.
America itself assumed greater international responsibilities at this time, and Jews followed
suit.
It reshaped its composition and geographical distribution, resulting in a heavy
concentration of Jews in East Coast cities, including some (like Boston) where Jews had
never lived in great numbers before. As early as 1914, the American Jewish community
mobilized its resources to assist the victims of the European war.
Cooperating to a degree not previously seen, the various factions of the American
Jewish community - native-born and immigrant, Reform, Orthodox, secular, and socialist coalesced to form what eventually became known as the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee. All told, American Jews raised 63 million dollars in relief funds
during the war years and became more immersed in European Jewish affairs than ever
before. They even joined in representing Jewish interests at the Paris Peace Conference
after the war. Also, American Jews continued their intense involvement in Zionism - the

16
movement to create a Jewish state in the Middle East (now Israel) - which further reflected
their burgeoning sense of responsibility for the fate of Jews around the world.
World War I ended the era of mass Jewish immigration to the United States, as
wartime conditions and then restrictive quotas stemmed the human tide. Soon, for the first
time in many decades, the majority of American Jews would be native born. Where the
central focus of American Jewish life had been concentrated on problems of immigration
and absorption, American Jewry now entered a period of stable consolidation. The children
of immigrants moved up into the middle class and out to more fashionable neighborhoods,
creating new institutions synagogue-centers, progressive Hebrew schools, and the like-as
they went.
History had proved that East European Jews would Americanize with a vengeance.
The question now was whether, as Americans, they would still remain Jews. Programs
designed to ensure that they would become high community priorities.
With stability and the rise of a new generation came a growing commitment to
communal unity. Descendants of earlier Central European Jews and the more recent East
European Jews had been drawing closer together in America even before World War I.
After the war, with the growth of anti-Semitism at home and abroad as well as the
economic and social challenges posed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, this process
accelerated. Anti-Semitism peaked in America in the interwar years, and was practiced in
different ways by even highly respected individuals and institutions.
Private schools, camps, colleges, resorts, and places of employment all imposed
restrictions and quotas against Jews, often quite blatantly. Leading Americans, including
Henry Ford and the widely listened-to radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin, engaged in
public attacks upon Jews, impugning their character and patriotism. In several major cities,
Jews also faced physical danger; attacks on young Jews were commonplace. When coupled
with the economic hardship wrought by the Great Depression, it is no surprise that Jews
during these years sought to bury their differences and stress their interdependence.
Leaving old world divisions behind, they began to coalesce into an avowedly

17
American Jewish community - a community that could attempt, at least on some issues, to
unite in self-defense.
Even as the community was uniting, however, it was being rent asunder in new
ways. The three-part religious division among Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews,
firmly institutionalized in this period, gave expression to longstanding intracommunal
conflicts over rituals, beliefs, and attitudes toward tradition and change. Zionism and
Communism proved even more divisive since they raised fundamental questions
concerning the meaning of American Jewish life and the obligations of Jews to the country
in which they lived.
With the terrible destruction of the major European centers of Judaism, America in
1945 stood unrivaled as the largest, richest, and politically most important Jewish
community in the world. Smaller Jewish communities turned increasingly to American
Jewry for guidance and support. Thousands of Jewish refugees likewise turned to America
and under more liberal immigration policies many gained admission. Within a few years,
some had contributed in vital ways to American cultural, scientific, and intellectual life.
Others, especially Hungarian and Hassidic Jews (who emphasize strict allegiance to
tradition), added fresh dimensions to American Judaism, and helped to promote
Orthodoxys postwar revitalization.
With its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel became the focal point of American
Jewish life and philanthropy, as well as the symbol around which American Jews united. At
the same time, American Jews worked in the years following World War II to reinvigorate
American Jewish life. Burgeoning economic growth, increasing popular acceptance of
religious and cultural pluralism, the high education achievements of native-born Jews, and
an overpowering desire on the part of many Jews to make it in America all contributed
during these decades to a spectacular rise of American Jews to positions of authority and
respect within the general American community.
The Six-Day War of June 1967 marked a turning point in the lives of many 1960s-era
Jews. The paralyzing fear of a second Holocaust followed by tiny Israel's seemingly

18
miraculous victory over the combined Arab armies arrayed to destroy it struck deep
emotional chords among American Jews. Their financial support for Israel rose sharply in
the war's wake, and more of them than ever before chose in those years to make Israel their
permanent home. In addition, something of a spiritual revival washed over the American
Jewish community after 1967. Many turned religiously inward, some were born again
into Orthodoxy, and every movement in American Judaism witnessed new interest in
traditional religious practices, heightened appreciation for mystical and spiritual sources,
and an enhanced desire for Jewish learning.
Two movements with far-reaching significance for American Jews emerged during
period, both of them influenced by Americas domestic struggles for civil rights.
1.

The movement to save Soviet Jews.

2.

American Jewish activists, in concert with Israel and with memories of the
Holocaust fresh in their minds, waged a relentless let my people go campaign that
ultimately proved successful. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews subsequently
emigrated to Israel and the United States.

3.

Jewish feminism. This movement advocated gender equality and promoted

increased involvement for women in all areas of Jewish life, including the synagogue. The
ordination of women rabbis beginning in 1972, the burgeoning Jewish education
opportunities opened to women, the development of women's rituals and prayer services,
the emergence of women in many positions of communal responsibility once open only to
men, and the changing role of women in Orthodoxy all attest to feminism's impact.
The waning days of the twentieth century found the American Jewish community at a
crossroads in its history. Demographically, the community was stagnant. It had not grown
appreciably since 1960, comprised a smaller percentage of Americas total population than
it had in 1920, and seemed likely to witness an actual decline in numbers in the decades
ahead. The great issues of the past, including Zionism, no longer inspired and united
American Jews as once they had. Nor was there any large community of suffering or
persecuted Jews anywhere in the world calling upon the American Jewish community for

19
assistance. As a result, American Jewry turned inward. Its new rallying cry, born of a
survey that showed more Jews marrying out of their faith than within it, was continuity.
Guiding Student Discussion:
Mass migration of Jews and Catholics transformed American society and raised the
question of what kind of nation America would become. Jews played an important role in
shaping this debate and its terms.
1.

The Melting Pot. The Anglo-Jewish writer, Israel Zangwill, in a play first
produced in 1908 and dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, attacked those who sought to
fashion America on the European model and hailed instead the idea of the melting pot,
which was both the title of his play and the ideal to which he thought Americans should
aspire (Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God).

2.

Cultural Pluralism. By contrast, the American Jewish thinker Horace Kallen

propounded what he called cultural pluralism. He compared America to an orchestra,
where each group played its own instrument while together they produced beautiful
euphonic music.
Today, yet another model of American society has been propounded, the idea of
multiculturalism. What are the pros and cons of these different models? How have Jews
and others sought to balance adaptation and retention? In what ways have they
accommodated to America, and in what ways have they resisted it?
Zionism became a central theme of American Jewish life in the years between the
world wars. Louis Brandeis, who became the leader of American Zionism on the eve of
World War I, just prior to his becoming the first Jew to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court,
did much to make it fashionable, linking Zionism to the American ideal of democracy, of
social justice and of liberty, and arguing that to be good Americans we must be better
Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists. Opponents of Zionism, meanwhile,
argued that Jews should strive to be accepted as full and equal citizens of the countries
where they lived, and they feared that Zionism would raise the specter of dual loyalty.

20
Where Zionists stressed that Jews were primarily a people who needed a homeland, antiZionists insisted that Judaism was primarily a religion that Jews should be free to practice
anywhere in the world. Looking back, how do students evaluate this debate? Why did it
arise during the interwar years, and which arguments, in retrospect, seem more persuasive?
Historians Debate:
Historians have long debated both the extent of anti-Semitism in Americas past, and
the similarities and differences between American anti-Semitism and its European
counterpart. Earlier students of American Jewish life minimized anti-Semitism, which they
viewed as a late and alien phenomenon on the American scene arising in the late nineteenth
century. More recently, scholars have pushed back the history of American anti-Semitism,
discovering that no period in American Jewish history was free of this scourge: Jews
encountered it from their earliest days on American soil. Yet the significance of antiSemitism at different times, and the distinctiveness of the American encounter with the
great

hatred,

remains

subjects

of

intense

debate:

One

can

see

Leonard

Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (1994), David Gerber, Anti-Semitism in American

History (1986), and John Higham, Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in
America (1975).
YIDDISH LETERATURE:
One of the strongest unifying links between Jews throughout the world is the
Hebrew language. From the time of Abraham in 2000 B.C.E. until the Babylonians
captured Judah in 586 B.C.E., Hebrew was the everyday language of Jews. Since then,
Jews have generally adopted the vernacular of the societies in which they have resided,
including Arabic, German, Russian, and English. Hebrew continued to be spoken and read,
but primarily in sacred contexts. Most of the Torah is written in Hebrew, and religious
services are mostly in Hebrew, though Progressive synagogues will make greater use of the
language of the community. The use of Hebrew in religious worship enables Jews from all
parts of the world to enjoy a common bond. In the twentieth century, Hebrew regained its
status as an everyday language in Israel, where it is the official language.

21
During the Diaspora, as Jews left Palestine to settle in various parts of Europe, two
distinctly Jewish languages emerged. The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal developed
Ladino, a mixture of Spanish and Hebrew, while Ashkenazic Jews in central and eastern
Europe spoke Yiddish, a combination of medieval German and Hebrew. These two
languages were spoken by immigrants when they came to America, but were not typically
passed on to the next generation. The exception to this occurred during the turn of the
century when Russian Jews helped Yiddish gain a strong foothold in America through
Yiddish newspapers and theater. At its high point in 1920, Yiddish was spoken by half of
the Jewish population in America. By 1940, however, the proportion of American Jews
who spoke Yiddish had dropped to one-third, and its presence as a world language was
severely threatened by the Holocaust, which killed most of the Yiddish-speaking Jews.
Today, a small but growing minority of Jews are attempting to revitalize Yiddish as a
language uniquely capable of transmitting Jewish cultural heritage.
As Jews have spread to Europe and America after being forced out of Palestine, their
cultural heritage has depended on strong family and community relations. One of the chief
ways in which Jews, particularly Orthodox Jews, have maintained family and community
values has been through the keeping of Shabat,the Sabbath. Observing Shabat,or the
day of delight, is one of the Ten Commandments and is essentially a matter of taking a
break from work to devote one day of the week to rest, contemplation, and family and
community togetherness. Just prior to Sabbath, which lasts from sunset on Friday to late
Saturday night, the family must complete all the preparations for the day because no work
should be done once the Sabbath begins.
Traditionally, the mother starts the Sabbath by lighting candles and saying a special
prayer. Afterward, the family attends a short service in the synagogue, and then returns
home for a meal and lighthearted conversation, perhaps even singing. The following
morning the community gathers in the synagogue for the most important religious service
of the week. On Saturday afternoon observant Jews will continue to refrain from work and
either make social visits or spend time in quiet reflection. A ceremony called havdalah
(distinction) takes place Saturday night, marking the end of Sabbath and the beginning of
the new week.

22
The relative importance of Shabat and the synagogue for American Jews has
declined over the years. In fact, the history of Jews in America reflects an ongoing
secularization of Jewish values. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Jewish community
center developed as an important nonsectarian counterpart to the synagogue. Modeled after
the Young Men's Hebrew Association, Jewish community centers became dominated by the
1920s by professionals who wanted to establish a central place for younger Jews to acquire
such American values as humanism and self-development. While such community centers
continue to play a role in Jewish population areas, many of today's American Jews no
longer associate with a synagogue or community center, but may live in a Jewish
neighborhood as the only outward sign of their Jewish identity.
According to Judaism, marriage is the fulfillment of one of Gods purposes for
human beings. Consequently, all Jews are intended to experience both the joy and hardship
of matrimony, including rabbis. To facilitate the finding of a mate, the matchmaker plays a
role in Jewish society of bringing together suitable but perhaps reluctant individuals. The
matchmaker only helps the process along; the final choice must be made freely by both
partners according to Jewish law.
Traditionally, intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles has been forbidden. A Jew
who married a Christian faced ostracism from family and community. Jews who
immigrated to America during the Colonial period and after, however, intermarried with
non-Jews with relative impunity. This tolerance of religious freedom lasted until the 1880s
when the arrival of Russian Jews ushered in a conservative era with a more traditional view
of marriage. For the first half of the twentieth century, intermarriage among Jews remained
low, with only about five percent choosing to marry non-Jews.
By the 1960s and 1970s, however, intermarriage became more common, with as
many as 20 to 30 percent of Jews choosing non-Jewish mates, and by 1999 had risen to 52
percent. Increased assimilation and intermarriage has sparked concern over the continued
existence of American Jewry. A recent survey of American rabbis found opinion divided on
performance of mixed marriages by rabbis, with disagreement on whether performing such
marriage ceremonies encourages those marrying non-Jews to maintain their connection
with Judaism and perhaps encourages the non-Jewish partners to convert.

23
The question of whos a Jew in Israel also has American Jews concerned. Recent
legislation makes conversions to Judaism legal only when performed by Orthodox rabbis.
This has political implications, given the close relationship of religious affiliation and
political power in Israel; for example, 150 religious councils distribute more than $70
million in government funds annually. More important for American Jews is that along
with the authority over conversions comes the authority to determine eligibility for
automatic Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. Eighty-five percent of American
Jews are Reform, Conservative, or unaffiliated and thus feel that such legislation is shutting
them out, in effect telling them that they are not really Jews. In 1997 many withheld
charitable contributions or redirected them to more secular organizations in response.
Jewish babies usually receive two names, an everyday name and a Hebrew name
used in the synagogue and on religious documents. The naming of the baby occurs after
birth at a baby-naming service or, for many male babies, when they are circumcised. Since
the emergence of Judaism some 4,000 years ago, Jews have observed the tradition of brit
milah (covenant of circumcision). Although the practice of cutting the foreskin of male
babies probably served a hygienic purpose originally, circumcision has come to represent
the beginning of life in the Jewish community.
To be sure, many non-Jews are circumcised, and being born of a Jewish mother is
sufficient to make a baby Jewish. Nevertheless, circumcision is traditionally associated
with the keeping of the covenant between Abraham and God as well as with physical and
ethical purity. The britmilah must occur eight days after birth, unless the baby is sick. The
ceremony takes place in the home and is usually performed by a mohel an observant Jew
who may be a rabbi, doctor, or simply one skilled in the technique. After the circumcision,
who occurs very quickly and without much pain, a celebration of food, prayers, and
blessings follows. Bar mitzvah,which varies according to local traditions (Ashkenazic,
Sephardic, or Oriental) is the ceremony that initiates the young Jewish male into the
religious community. By reading in the synagogue, he becomes an adult. According to
Talmudic tradition, this usually occurs at the age of 13. Following the reading in the
synagogue, there is a celebration (seudat mitzavah). In the twentieth century, the bas or

24
bat mitzvah has been introduced for young girls; however, this occurs more frequently in
the Reform and Conservative groups than the Orthodox ones.
JEWISH AMERICAN WRITERS:
A great number of contemporary Jewish-American writers such as Norman Mailer,
Saul Bellow, and Joseph Heller, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth and others
have had literary success. The language employed by these writers is standard American
English, they are socially accepted, and their works are read by a wide Jewish and nonJewish audience. For this reason it is widely considered that their texts form part of a
recognized literary canon, and belong to the American literary center or mainstream, as
far as this may still be defined today. As much as one agreed to this idea one cannot ignore
several facts which underline the necessity to view Jewish American literary productions as
shaped by strong ethnic forces, and Jewish American literature as both belonging to and
standing out in the multicultural American landscape.
There are two main reasons why American Jewish cannot be successfully identified
with the culture of the establishment. First if at all, it is a fact that, as much as they tried to
ingratiate themselves with the white mainstream majority, Jewish Americans just like any
other ethnic writers have an acute sense of doubleness, a double consciousness (Sollors,
P.243) and they confront an actual or imagined double audience, composed of insiders
and of readers, listeners, or spectators who are not familiar with the writers ethnic group,
from both of whom they must have felt alienated at times. This sense is widely pervasive in
their work and differentiates them from other mainstream writers who are singleconscious
Secondly, just like in many other ethnic communities there is a strong tendency to
resist assimilation into the mainstream. Werner Sollors points out to the fact that:
Americans perceive themselves as undergoing cultural homogenization (P.245), that is
Americans of different backgrounds share larger and larger areas of an overlapping culture.
To fight against this tendency there have been made efforts to maintain symbolic
distinctions, a process known as ethnicization. The Jewish American community is very
active in this respect. One such effort belongs to Dean J. Franco. In his book published in

25
2006, Ethnic American Literature: Comparing Chicano, Jewish, and African American
Writing he tried to provide a strong corrective to the tendency of other minority traditions
to dismiss Jewish literature as being of the center, drawing from border theory as well as
diasporic and postcolonial theorists and pointing to the acute social vulnerability, painful
histories, and cultural anxieties that inform much of the Jewish literature of the past
century.
A third aspect, supporting distinction from both mainstream literature and other
ethnic literatures, is that Jewish literature has always been the fruit of a culture of exile,
diaspora, homecoming; of a literary world in which Jewish authors from one country read
and interact with Jewish authors from other countries; of a community in which Jews from
America are intimately concerned with the European Holocaust and with the fate of the
State of Israel (Wirth-Nesher and Kramer P.7)
Jews have an entirely different notion of country of origin from European Americans.
After all, not all Jews (including Jewish Americans) trace their ancestry to Europe, and
even when they do, immigrants did not consider themselves to be Russians, Germans or
Polish. Besides, Jews have for millennia understood their ancestral homeland to be not in
Europe but in the Middle East And for these very reasons, some scholars have become
increasingly skeptical of the specific reconfigurations of Americas multicultural map
around what David Hollinger has called the ethno-racial pentagon of European, Asian,
African, Hispanic, and indigenous peoples. This foregrounding of race relegates Jews to a
dehistoricized and culturally vacant category (idem). Between the dominant position of
the white majority and the marginal position of peoples of color (having been perceived as
such for most of Americas history), American Jews have no clearly designated place on
Americas multicultural map which acknowledges their difference
In view of all the arguments brought so far, one concludes by quoting Wirth-Nesher
and Kramers verdict in their Introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Jewish
American Literature: Given that the Jewish American experience cannot easily be
assimilated into existing models of multiculturalism, it poses a challenge to them - a
challenge that has not as yet been satisfactorily answered( P.8)

26
Bellow vs. Roth
As with other Bellow protagonists, Herzogs mind is a means to both salvation and
ruin. Still, thats more than can be said for Roths bedraggled men, who turbulently spiral
toward damnation. Thats one of the crucial differences between the two postwar Jewish
writers: For Bellow, the mind offers moments of transcendence, however fleeting and
hallucinatory; for Roth, its just a receptacle for grief and the detritus of life. These implicit
ideologies are brought to bear in each writers prose. Bellows characters interior
monologues are like leavening agents, inflating and softening the action around them.
Roths prose, on the other hand, remains flat and forbidding, precluding flights of fancy
and instead expanding the narrative through calcified, matter-of-fact memories that, happy
or sad, are just more bullets in the hearts of characters like Sabbath, deepening their
cynicism and subservience to the only fate they have narrow-mindedly conceived for
themselves.
In a way, Bellows prose style is his characters salvation. It lifts them out of the
drab, shambling circumstances they so often find themselves in, gives their life meaning
(or at least an ambitious, wildly demonstrative gesturing toward meaning). With Roth,
there is little meaning outside the story itself, its bones, muscles and tendons. And as the
narrative frame of American Pastoral - in which Nathan Zuckerman hears of the tragic
demise of Swede Levov at a high school reunion - attests, the ability to tell the story, to
recount and relive it in excruciating Faulknerian detail, may sometimes be enough.
But theres no choosing between Roth and Bellow. Both have chronicled American
life in fearless, painstaking detail and shown the readers how Jewish literature is American
literature, rather than some subgenre to be ghettoized by scholars and Wikipedia editors.
However, in his highly original stream of consciousness style and towering ambition to
synthesize so many strands of intellectual inquiry in a search for meaning and order,
Bellow has more thoroughly inherited the aims and innovations of modernism. But he was
also writing, for the most part, 20 years prior to Roth and so was not so far removed
from Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway or even In Search of Lost Time. Bellow could, and did,
successfully draw on that fresh legacy of authors mixing memory, imagination and the
longing intellect - like Herzog, eager to encompass everything.

27
More than anything, the stark differences between Bellow and Roth show one just
how much American literature changed in less than two decades. Sure, there are the
postmodernists like Wallace, Pynchon and DeLillo, employing metafiction and bending
reality through sustained irony, strung-out paranoia and warped historiography, but it seems
Roths brand of heavy-handed realism and intense focus on the vagaries and breakdowns of
family life have won the day. Bellows heroes - Charlie Citrine, Augie March, Moses
Herzog - are great literary characters; they are tragic, funny, raven by strife, self-reflective,
realized with incredible depth and utterly memorable.
Although they are unmistakably Jewish-Americans, they would probably manage just
fine in another country, thrive shambolic ally in England, Italy or France. Roths heroes and
antiheroes, on the other hand, are incontrovertibly American. Their lives represent the
perversion and degradation of the American Dream, and theres just no sticking them in
Paris or London or Venice. In that one crucial difference between the two authors, one can
see how American literature has shifted from a transatlantic art form in Bellows time to
one deeply obsessed with its own country in Roths, and the litany of shattered promises
that country makes to man and his family.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION AND LANGUAGE:
The relationship between literature and religion goes a long way back, in fact, it goes
back to the dawn of literature, since mans first literary explorations were religious in their
very nature. One only has to read the Bhagavad Gita, the Yogi scriptures, the Norwegian
legends, the Greek myths and of course the Old Testament or even runic inscriptions to see
how true this is. Literature was used for religious education and even Chaucer was of the
opinion that all that is written is written for our instruction. (G.B Tennyson, Edward E.
Ericson. Introduction in Religion and Modern Literature Grand Rapids (MI): William B.
Eerdmans P. C., 1975, 13) There by paraphrasing St. Paul, who had preached this message
to Christians centuries earlier? Only gradually, literature separated itself from religion and
came to be written because of various secular motives.
However, this development has not been without its problems, literature has been
viewed as replacing religious books such as the Bible, fulfilling a similar purpose, while at

28
the same time, filling peoples heads with fabrications from a non-divine source.
Consequently, literature has become one of the flagships of secularism, testing Gods truth
with stories written by men.
As steadfast faith in religion started to dwindle and science gained authority, the
word God itself became a term of poetry, as stated by Matthew Arnold in Literature and
Dogma, which redressed the relationship between sacred and secular literature again. Truth
claims of religious literature aside, when a poet or novelist attempts to write about religion,
he or she stumbles upon the problem indicated by Arnold: God is not exact science; in fact,
God is very difficult to understand or even perceive at all, never mind put into words.
Arthur McCalla eloquently states that God is not a captive of human categories, for this
reason, Hegel, Schelling and Hugo resorted to calling him the Absolute or Infinite as
God is incommensurable with human knowledge.
Language cannot bridge the gap between God and man, yet, it can describe, and
through writing attempt to understand, individuals and communities utterly and completely
devoted to God. Literature can open up, or at least allow us a glimpse into religious
communities that are completely unfamiliar and inaccessible to most readers in a way nonfiction cannot.
One of the authors who has been able to do this well is Chaim Potok. His first novel,
The Chosen, written when he was working on his doctorate in the early 1960s, captured
the minds and hearts of both Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike. Not a major
accomplishment one could argue, when looking at the success Bellow, Malamud and Roth
enjoyed amongst a gentile audience, but Potok chose to write about Orthodox and Hasidic
Jewish communities, far removed from the secular worlds of his esteemed colleagues.
In The Chosen, Potok fundamentally sketches the conflict between Orthodox and
Hasidic Jews during the 1940s in America. The narrator, Reuven Malter, is an Orthodox
Jew who forms an unlikely friendship with Daniel Saunders, the son of a Hasidic Tzaddik,
the religious leader of a Hassidic community. In the first pages of the novel, Potok reorients the reader so that she sees the world through Reuvens eyes, committed to Orthodox
Judaism, but also committed to some level of participation in American life.

29
This brings him into conflicts with other Jews, most significantly the Hasidic world
of Danny and Rebbe Saunders. (Kathryn McClymond, The Chosen: Defining American
Judaism, (Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies25.2 (2007), 10)
A quick digression is required to explain why these two denominations might be in
conflict with each other. Orthodox Jews are of the conviction that they adhere to the Jewish
practices and beliefs that existed from the time of Moses all the way through to the rabbinic
era up until the present day, without ever truly changing or adapting Judaism. Orthodox
Jews came to define themselves as Orthodox in reaction to the Age of Enlightenment or
the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when
certain groups of Jews, although respecting and observing the Jewish law wished to
modernize and reform certain aspects of Judaism, in line with the spirit of the time, while
Orthodox Jews resisted this.
Hasidism, on the other hand, is largely founded upon the teachings of the Baal
Shem Tov, a mystic from eighteenth century Poland, who Kabbalist texts, such as the
Zohar, the writings of Isaac Luria and Chaim Vital, rather than Talmud. Through his
practices and beliefs, the Besht reached out to the masses as he broke away from the
intellectual and presumably difficult to comprehend tradition of an elitist group of scholars,
yet at the same time, presenting those scholars with a type of mysticism they could accept.
(Kathryn McClymond Chosen: Defining American Judaism, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Jewish Studies25.2 (2007), 10)
Inevitably, there were conflicts with the Mitnagdim or ultra-orthodox Jews, almost
from the beginning of Hasidism. Yet, the more time passed, the more Hasidism changed,
institutionalized and in part because of their conflicts with the Mitnagdim,( See Mordecai
L. Wilensky. Hasidic-Mitnaggedic Polemics, in Essential Papers on Hasidism, Ed. David
Hundert. New York, NYUP, 1991, 266.) Hasidic Jews returned to studying Talmud instead
of Kabbalah. Hence, to the outsider, both Jewish denominations may appear quite similar,
with the exception of how the respective members are dressed, but that is not the way
Orthodox and Hasidic Jews see themselves, they truly believe they have distinct identities.

30
To those unaware of this conflict, The Chosen quickly makes it abundantly clear and
through a typical American sport, baseball. In an effort to demonstrate to the gentile world
that Orthodox and Hasidic teenagers are just as physically religious schools, in New York
decide to hold a baseball competition. The game does not indicate the difference between
American gentiles and Jews, but between two different Jewish denominations. In that
baseball game you have two aspects of Jewish Orthodoxy in contention. You have the
Eastern European aspect, which prefers to turn inward and not confront the outside world.
You have the Western European more objective scientific aspect... that is not afraid to look
at the outside world that produces scientists. These are in interaction with one another
inside the core. Thats the baseball game.( Harold Ribalow, A Conversation with Chaim
Potok, (in Conversations with Chaim Potok. Ed. Daniel Walden. University of Press of
Mississippi. Jackson, 2001) 13)
On the one hand, one has the introvert, non-communicative Hasidic Jews who play in
their full Hasidic attire, black suit, visible tzizit(Ritually knotted fringes attached to the four
corners of the tallit katan (a garment that is a smaller version of the prayer shawl), which
Hassidic Jewish men usually wear under their clothes) and dangling earlocks, with a
Yiddish-speaking Rabbi as their coach (who spends most of the game studying Torah) and
on the other, the more Americanized Orthodox Jews, dressed as non-Jewish teenagers save
for the skullcap, speaking English amongst each other and whose coach is a gym teacher at
a public high school. All the players are wrapped up in the conflict inherent to the game of
baseball and the conflict between their opposing denominations.
The animosity between the two groups, Dannys and Reuvens, is quickly felt, both
parties shout abuse and mutual loathing reaches a peak when Danny hits Reuven in the eye
with a baseball, which results in him having to be taken to the hospital to undergo extensive
eye surgery. This tragic event is in fact what forms the basis of the friendship between
Reuven and Danny, as Danny decides to come to the hospital to apologise for his actions
and attempt to understand why he hated Reuven so much he wanted to kill him, which he
actually says on page seventy, I dont understand why I wanted to kill you. (Chaim
Potok. The Chosen. (New York: Penguin Books, 1967, P. 190)70

31
At first, Reuven is naturally none too pleased to see Danny, yet he quickly becomes
intrigued by him, for a number of reasons. Daniel has to become the next Tzaddik
succeeding his father, since it is an inherited position, although he prefers to become a
psychologist. He also has a fondness for secular literature such as Ivanhoe, which, due to is
absolute memory, he is able to recite by heart. Reuvens father would like him to become a
mathematician, whereas he wants to become a Rabbi, something Daniel cannot understand,
since Danny is searching for more freedom and is hungry for secular knowledge
He reads Darwin, Huxley and Freud, even though he has to learn German in order to
do so. This is how he meets Reuvens father, David Malter, since he can only read safely in
the library, the library where Reuvens father, who is a yeshiva teacher, likes to read as
well. Slowly but surely, Reuven, encouraged by his father,is taken into the Hasidic world
and the reader is taken with him. Reuvens father explains to him, and thus to the reader,
the story of the Baalshem Tov and how Hasidic communities work. Reuven is taken to a
Hasidic Shabbat service, which is how the reader is introduced to Hasidic religious services
and certain more accessible forms of Kabbalah, such as gematriya, which gives all Hebrew
letters numbers, in order to add and subtract words from each other to uncover different
layers of meaning in the Torah.
Soon Reuven learns about another unusual aspect of Daniels world, his father has
chosen to raise him in complete silence and will not talk to him unless they are studying
Talmud, a mystery the reader is left to contemplate till the end of the novel. For three years,
they are close friends, both diving deeper into each others worlds, discussing methods of
studying Talmud (Reuvens father is an advocate of using secular, text-critical approaches),
discussing theories such as evolution, Freud and choosing to attend the same college,
Hirsch College. Then, World War II ends; the news of the concentration camps and the six
million murdered Jews reaches America. Reuvens father decides that people have waited
long enough for the Messiah and becomes actively and publicly involved in Zionism.
Dannys father, however, tries to understand why God brought the Shoah upon the Jewish
people and is opposed to forming a Jewish State without the Messiah
How the world makes us suffer. It is the will of God. We must accept the will of
God... God will build the land, not Ben Gurionand his goyim.(Potok, P.196.) A secular

32
Jewish state is an abomination in the eyes of Reb Saunders, a violation of Torah and he
commences to fight against it with all his might. It should be clear by now that, as
McClymond states, the threats and temptations Danny and Reuven face do not [only]
come from secular America but from crises within their core communities: the influx of
textual critical methods into yeshivas, the worldwide devastation and theological
challenges of the Holocaust, and the deeply passionate stances for and against Zionism.
(McClymond P.17).
In the end, it is the conflict about Zionism that temporarily severs the friendship, as
evidently the son of a Zionist could not be friends with the son of an anti-Zionist and for
two years, they do not speak. When this conflict has mellowed down and they finally speak
again, many things have changed, Daniel has decided not to become a Tzaddik, but to
follow his heart, attend graduate school and become a psychologist. He knows this will
pain his father and quite possibly jeopardize his position in the Hasidic community. It
would also mean ending an arranged marriage which his father had set up for him - a
Hasidic tradition. Reuven has made up his mind to become a Rabbi, despite his great talent
for logic and mathematics and his critical method of studying Talmud, which got him into
trouble at Hirsch College. [Danny] shook his head. I cant get over you becoming a
rabbi. I cant get over you becoming a psychologist. And we looked at each other in quiet
wonder. (Potok P. 257)
By that point, Danny has embraced his fathers way of raising him in silence,
listening to it and learning from it in the manner of a Hasidic sage. Towards the end of the
novel, the reader finally understands the reason for this strange method of child rearing.
When Danny was very young, Reb Saunders had recognized the brilliant jewel that is his
sons mind and he was afraid it would dehumanise him and turn him away from Judaism.
Hence, he raised Daniel in silence to teach him compassion, for his heart to stay close to
God in secular America, where his great mind would go wandering. This interaction
between father and son will come to shape Dannys life and he admits that he himself may
want to raise his own son this way, when the time comes.
In an interview, Chaim Potok makes the comparison between Reb Saunders and
Daniel and God and the Jews, or in fact all religious people in the twentieth century.

33
Theres something going on that Danny doesnt understand, and its the metaphor for
precisely what it is that the religious person does in terms of his relationship to God in the
twentieth century. Something is going on, and we dont understand it. Theres a silence
between the Jewish people, or indeed all religious people, and God in this century. But
whatever it is - and I dont understand it - the silence is not a break in communication. Its a
communication of a different kind, and what we try to do is tap into it and see what its all
about.( Chaim Potok quoted in Elaine M. Kauvar An Interview with Chaim Potok (in
Contemporary Literature, 27.3 (Autumn, 1986), P.309).
In the twentieth century, people seemed to turn away from God and God appeared to
remain silent throughout some of the greatest crises of the last millennia, incomprehensible
to a lot of religious people, but Potok offered an attempt to make it meaningful, at least to
himself and his readers. In the final pages of the novel, Reb Saunders accepts Dannys
decision not to succeed him, saying let my Daniel become a psychologist. I have no more
fear now. All his life he will be a tzaddik. He will be a tzaddik for the world. And the world
needs a tzaddik.(Potok P.277).
Reb Saunders is certain that Dannys identity will always remain that of a Tzaddik
and he will be able to help, in whichever way, the interaction between God and his people.
Saunders is right, although Danny shaves off his beard and earlocks, he knows and he
promises his father he will always remain a Hasidic Jew, an observer of the
Commandments, which the reader is able to witness in the sequel of The Chosen, The
Promise.
It is important to note that Danny and Reuven, despite of their struggles, never
consider abandoning Judaism, rather they try to negotiate their Jewish identity within
secular American society, in what Potok calls core-to-core confrontations (McClymond
19). A process Potok himself was acutely familiar with, since he had grown up in a Hasidic
community which he chose to leave during his university years. According to his college
roommate and lifelong friend Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, it was the most devastating crisis of his
life. (Leslie Field , Chaim Potok and the Critics: Sampler from a Consistent Spectrum,
inStudies in American Jewish Literature: The World of Chaim Potok, no. 4 Ed. Daniel
Walden (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985)3.

34
Yet, in the end it helped Chaim Potok become the excellent writer he is, for, as Philip
Toynbee wrote, few Jewish writers have emerged from so deep in the heart of orthodoxy;
fewer still have been able to write about their emergence with such an unforced sympathy
for both sides and every participant. (Philip Toynbee quoted in Chaim Potok: A Critical
Companion. Ed. Sanford V. Sternlicht. Westport (CT): Greenwood P, 2000, 6.
Potok did not forsake Judaism all together either, he chose to become a member of
the conservative movement, a less orthodox form of Judaism, in which he remained until
he died. Chaim Potok shows his readers Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism, two worlds which
are different degrees of alien to gentiles and even secular Jews. He illustrates how religion
both shapes identity and forms an obstacle to finding ones individual identity within a
closed and isolated group, which is at odds with modern day society. However, the
characters The Chosen also demonstrate how to negotiate their religious identity within a
secular society. Literature proved to be an excellent medium, giving the reader a moving
and colourful account of the lives of these Jews and helping us understand their various
problems in a way a sociological study would not have, while, at the same time, attesting
that the relationship between literature and religion need not be so complicated after all. In
this chapter Introduction it is said to be proper to summarise each selected novel briefly.
The Chosen
Potoks novel opens with a heated baseball game between two teams, one Orthodox,
the other Hasidic. A main character is Reuven Malter who is modern Orthodox and narrator
of the story. Reuven is struck in the eye with a baseball hit by Daniel Saunders, son of the
Hasidic rebbe. He is hospitalized and during recovery, becomes unusually good friends
with Danny. The plot revolves around Danny and the trials he is experiencing. Danny is
highly intelligent and possesses a photographic memory.
Danny lacks compassion and from the time he was seven years old his father did not
speak to him, raising him in silence, It was Reb Saunders method of teaching his son to
suffer and have compassion for others. Not only does Danny not have a father in whom to
confide but he is also surrounded by the secular world whose ideas and areas of study
beckon him. With Reuven Malters help, Danny learns how to manage his feelings and

35
desires. His fathers silence also teaches him a great deal and in the end, though Danny
does not inherit the rebbeship from father, he does gain compassion for others.
The Promise
The Promise continues the story of Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, with more
of an emphasis on Reuvens life. Danny and Reuven are both in college, Danny studying
psychology and Reuven studying to be a rabbi. World War II is over and the Jewish people
are left with not only the reality of the Holocaust, but the survivors.
The Promise deals with the religious zeal of these survivors, in particular one Rav
Kalman, Reuven Malters Talmud professor. Reuven is not the only person affected by
Holocaust survivors; a young boy, Michael Gordon, is psychologically impacted by their
virulent attacks against his father, Abraham Gordon, a liberal Jewish scholar. Abraham
Gordon does not believe in God, but man, while the survivors believe only in God and have
lost faith in humankind. It is between these two types of Judaism that Reuven finds
himself, and he is forced to make a choice between the two. By the novels conclusion we
see maturity in all the characters and good or bad, they have made their choices.
The beginning
In The Beginning, the title of Potoks fourth novel, through direct allusion to the
Hebrew Bible, foregrounds Genesis and foreshadows the books complex layering of
biblical and later Jewish themes and texts. The novel recalls Berashith Bara Elohim , In
the beginning, God created...With its confident assertion of a good God creating good
things, the sacred account predicates all subsequent biblical narrative on elemental
goodness. In Potoks and readers post lapsarian world, his novel rightly begins, All
beginnings are hard (P.1.) The growing complexity of the beginning-phrase reflects Jewish
and of non-Jewish history. Potok writes in the shadow of the biblical imagination, as in
Herold Blooms notion of the anxiety of influence (The Anxiety of Influence 1973),
and draws to the modern readers attention the complexity of this first assertion. Hugh
Nissenson suggests in his review My name is Dvid Lurie that an important intertextual
relationship exists between In the beginning and The Book of Genesis: (the novel is) a
recapitulation of the book of Genesis from the Creation to the Flood (P.36).

36
For instance, he points to Davids fall on the stairs as a mythic element echoing
the biblical fall (p.10). Structurally, Nissensons idea is workable. However, it is thought
that thematically Potoks Dvid Lurie is foiled by his important biblical name sake, the
ancient king David, and that stylistically, the more important influence on Potoks novel is
the Wisdom Literature.
Perhaps, the most psychologically complex and elaborately presented narrative
cycle in the Hebrew Bible is the story of David. Lore Segal, in his article on David, II
Samuel (in Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible), writes of the
king:
David plays more roles, in more situations than any
modern protagonists: He is boy warrior, musician with healing
powers, poet laureate, and court favourite; For a while he is the
leader of a band of marauders who massacre alien cities. He is
monarch, general, diplomat, a natural at public relations, a public
man With a private life- a careful son, an irritating younger
brother, a loving and Faithful friend, the husband of a harem that
includes one angry wife; the Father of children who make him
howl with grief, an adulterer who plots murder, A penitent , a
frequent mourner, and an old man, at last who meets a new
Goliath And cant do anything about itcant make love, cant
keep warm. (P.109)
In the beginning is the novel in which Potok deals most directly with violence as a
central psychological and religious problem in the Jewish tradition and in the secular
world. In this book violence is monolithic and omnipresent and occurs in various forms. In
fact, it is located in David LURIES outer and inner worlds. Violence creates enormously
complex problems for David, including the question of theodicy, the investigation of the
justice of GOD; is it possible to defend the goodness and omnipotence of God in view of
the existence of overwhelming evil? Another problem violence generates for David is its
valorisation within his Jewish community, including the family, school, and traditional
society. David intuits himself to be a pacifist, yet he is the son of a competent, clever

37
soldier and a mother terrified by war. His community of JEWS exists largely because, as
history and myth recore, its member have fled violence in EUROPE, and America has,
until this century heeded George Washingtons directive in his second inaugural address, to
avoid foreign entanglements. But in Davids life violence is everywhere. Potok explores
these issues by location the discussion in Davids present reality of street racism in
Brooklyn, in the growing Nazi threat, and in the traditions and sacred texts of the Jewish
faith.
My Name is Asher Lev
It is written in the first person by the main character; Asher Lev. Potok weaves a story
about a boy who is caught between two worlds. He lives in the nucleus of the Ladover
Hasidic world, but is driven by an aesthetic passion into the secular world of art. Secular
artistic endeavours are not valued in the Hasidic world, so Asher meets with disapproval
from his parents and community.
Ashers father travels for the Rebbe, so Asher and his mother are frequently without a
father and husband. Ashers mother, Rivkeh, worries not only about her husbands travels,
but also the deteriorating relationship between Asher and his father. Rivkeh is in the middle
as she tries to maintain peace between father and son. In the end, Asher depicts her
suffering in two crucifixion paintings resulting in his excommunication from the Lad over
Hasidic community in New York.
The Gift of Asher Lev
This novel is the sequel to My Name Is Asher Lev. Asher is residing in France and is
married to a woman named Devorah. They have two children, Rocheleh and Avrumel. It
has been twenty years since Ashers exile from New York and he is now a famous artist.
The novel focuses on Ashers return, along with his family, to New York to attend the
funeral and week of mourning for Ashers Uncle Yitzchak. The week extends into months
as Devorah and the children desire to become acquainted with Ashers parents.
Once again Asher is confronted with the Hasidic world of his childhood which
continues to misunderstand him as an adult. In addition, Asher must make a decision that

38
might cost him a great price. Basically he must choose between his family and his art,
resulting in complete exile and seclusion.
Thus in this first chapter named Introduction Jewish immigration to America from
Eastern Europe and other countries has been given reasonable room. A brief introduction of
the author is mentioned. New York Jewish community, early Jewish American literature,
Yiddish literature and a few Jewish-American novels are also described briefly. The
following chapters of this thesis deal with a critical study of the chosen novels of Chaim
Potok.

39
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Potok, Chaim. The Chosen. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Crest Books, 1982. Print.
Potok, Chaim. The Promise.
Potok, Chaim. In The Beginning.
Potok, Chaim. The Gift of Asher Lev. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986. Print.
Potok, Chaim. My Name is Asher Lev New York: Fawcett Crest Books, 1991. Print.
SECONDARY SOURCES:
D.H.Lawrence Classic American literature (1924),
S.Lillian Kremer, Chaim Potok
Irving Howe, World Of Our Fathers. Copy-Right 1976 by Irving Howe. Printed in the US.
Wirth-Nesher and Krame Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (1994),
David Gerber, Anti-Semitism in American History (1986),
John Higham, Send These to Me: Jews and Other Immigrants in America (1975). G.B
Tennyson, Edward E. Ericson. Introduction in Religion and Modern Literature Grand
Rapids (MI): William B. Eerdmans P. C., 1975,
Kathryn McClymond, The Chosen: Defining American Judaism, (Shofar: An
Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies25.2 (2007)
Mordecai L. Wilensky. Hasidic-Mitnaggedic Polemics, in Essential Papers on Hasidism,
Ed. David Hundert. New York, NYUP, 1991
Conversations with Chaim Potok. Ed. Daniel Walden. University of Press of Mississippi.
Jackson, 2001 Contemporary Literature, 27.3 (autumn, 1986

40
Philip Toynbee quoted in Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion. Ed. Sanford V. Sternlicht.
Westport (CT): Greenwood P, 2000)
Herold Bloom. The Anxiety of Influence 1973 II Samuel (in Congregation:
Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible)

41
CHAPTER .NO.2

The Chosen
Chaim Potok tells the importance of intra-personal communication throughout the
novel The Chosen. His novel brilliantly exemplifies the concept of silence and suffering as
a pro-active tool towards self-realisation. It narrates the touching story of a father and a son
where the father deliberately imposes silence between himself and his son so that his son
will never go off course through worldly possessions and knowledge; instead he hopes the
silence will help him to cultivate the other deeper, inner sense of perception. In other
words, the imposed silence is intended to mould his son into maturity. It will force him to
turn inward and thus develop a better sense of his soul, a greater empathy for others and a
better sense of the world and his role in it.
Each individual may adapt different methods to bring about this realisation in
another person. But as one dwells deeper into the matter, one realizes that the curing agent
is none other than silence (or passive resistance) and suffering. The father character Reb
Saunders uses the weapon of silence to prepare his brilliant minded son Danny Saunders
to know the worth of pain and suffering; ... the Master of the Universe blessed me with a
brilliant son. And he cursed me with all the problems of raising him. Ah, what it is to have
a brilliant son, a Daniel, a boy with a mind like a jewel...I saw him reading a story from a
book. And I was frightened. He did not read the story; he swallowed it, as one swallows
food or water. There was no soul in my four-year-old Daniel, there was only his mind. He
was a mind in a body without a soul... (The Chosen P 263) Reb Saunders closed his eyes
and whimpered on his sons pathetic situation.
As Danny was even a small kid Saunders knew his son bore an intelligent mind but
it was a mind devoid of compassion for others. When Danny was four, he read a Yiddish
book about a poor Jew and his struggles to get to Eretz Yisroel before he died. The book
contained the description of the suffering he endured which could stir any ordinary readers
mind but Danny enjoyed the story, he enjoyed the last terrible page, because when he
finished it he realized for the first time what a memory he had. He looked at his father
proudly and told him back the story from memory, and his father cried inside his heart to

42
God; what have You done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a
son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength
to suffer and carry pain that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!(P264).With
that instance Saunders realized that he must strive hard to cultivate a compassionate mind
in his son and he chooses a seemingly callous method silence to teach his son those
humane qualities. From that day he never spoke with Danny other than while studying
Talmud. He taught him that words distort what a person really feels in his heart. He told
me once he wishes everyone could talk in silence (P72) said Danny to Reuven.
The narrator of The Chosen is Reuven Malter, a Jewish teenager in Brooklyn who
tells that he grew up several blocks away from Danny, not knowing of his existence until he
was fifteen. The area in which Danny lives is populated by Russian Hasidic Jews who were
fiercely loyal to Dannys father. There were also other Hasidic sects nearby, populated with
their own rabbis that hold their own loyalties. Danny attends a small yeshiva (Jewish
parochial school), while Reuven attends the yeshiva in which his father teaches in Crown
Heights, one which offers more English subjects and uses Hebrew instead of Yiddish.
Danny and Reuven only meet because of the desire of Jewish parochial teachers to
show the physical fitness of their students by organizing into competitive athletic leagues.
Reuven plays for the softball team, led by Mr. Galanter, a gym instructor in his early
thirties. Reuven plays against a team of Orthodox students, each with a crisp uniform that
contrasts with Reuvens more casual team. Davey Cantor warns Reuven of Danny
Saunders of the opposing team, the son of Reb Saunders. Danny Saunders hits a double and
ends at Reuvens base. While on base, Danny asks Reuven if his father is David Malter and
tells Reuven that his team will kill you apikorsim this afternoon (apikoros, plural
apikorsim, means a Jew who denies the basic tenets of his faith, indicating one who accepts
Darwinism, for example).
To Danny, Reuven is an apikoros because he goes to a school that teaches more
English. Reuvens father dislikes these types of Hasidic Jews for their fanatic sense of
righteousness. Reuven scrapes his elbow catching a hit by Danny, but continues playing.
Reuven later pitches against Danny, who after several pitches hits the ball back at Reuven,

43
not only hitting him in his left eye, but also shattering his glasses. Thus the two main
characters face a peculiar situation.
In The Chosen, Chaim Potok uses the relationship between Danny Saunders and
Reuven Malter as symbolic of the greater social and political problems faced by American
Jews during the mid-twentieth century, a time in which they faced such tragedies as the
Holocaust and the tension during the establishment of Israel as a secular Jewish state. In
fact, both of these issues play a significant role later in the novel. While Danny Saunders is
an orthodox, Hasidic Jew whose faith is strict and dogmatic, Reuven Malter views the
world from a more secular and liberal viewpoint. The point of conflict between Danny and
Reuven when they meet is thus the issue of assimilation into American society. For
Reuven, assimilation into the broader American culture is natural and acceptable, as shown
by his attendance at a yeshiva that teaches a more Standard English curriculum, while
Danny and his fellow Hasid resist this move away from their tradition.
The major conflict in this novel is thus not between Jews and gentiles, but in fact
between liberal and conservative Jewish sects that view each other with a sense of distrust
and contempt; Reuvens father dislikes the fanatic Hasidic sense of righteousness, while
Danny has great disdain for apikorsim as traitors to the Jewish faith. However, Potok
imbues the conflict in this chapter with a sense of irony: the two Jewish sects fight a
metaphorical battle over assimilation on a baseball field, one of the most prominent
symbols of the dominant American culture. Furthermore, the reason that both teams play
softball is to combat prevalent stereotypes of Jewish culture; thus both teams attempt to
modify their behavior to fit the expectations of American culture.
Thus in the early part of the novel, Potok constructs the currently antagonistic
relationship between Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter as the center bond of the novel.
Potok portrays Danny as an exemplar, the most formidable player that Reuven faces, while
Dannys mention of Reuvens father suggests that there is some hidden connection between
the two boys. The development of this relationship between the two boys and the revelation
of its meanings will provide a great deal of the narrative force of the novel.

44

But Danny couldnt realize what his father was trying to communicate with his son
through his silence. Saunders wanted his son to listen to his soul to realize his own
goodness that lie deep within his heart but concealed by his sharp brain. He wished his son
to go for some introspection or to know his strengths and weaknesses completely. He
wanted his son to rip open that heart over his mind by suffering through silence. My father
believed in silence. When I was ten or eleven years old, I complained to him about
something, and he told me to close my mouth and look into my soul. He told me to stop
running to him every time I had a problem. I should look into my own soul for the answer.
We just dont talk, Reuven. (P160) said Danny to Reuven.
A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him. The spark
is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell. The spark must be guarded like a
treasure, nurtured and must be fanned into flame. It must learn to seek out other sparks; it
must dominate the shell of evil. Anything can be that shell hatred, jealousy, laziness,
brutality and genius. And Dannys shell was his brilliant mind. He possessed a
photographic mind, a gift from God and recites pages of Talmud (Jewish law) as a
human machine. I look at a page of Talmud, and I remember it by heart. I understand it,
too...I can do it with Ivanhoe, too (P69) says Danny. Here lays Saunders mission to
change this photographic mind of Danny to a mind overflowing with love and concern for
others. Like Dr. Faustus Dannys mind craved for knowledge, ignoring the pain of
humanity, the more he studied more he became miserable.
He finds studying only the sacred text of Talmud, a principal activity of orthodox
Jewish males is too limiting. He secretly goes to a public library to read classical Western
literature as well as books about Psychology and Jewish history which is forbidden by the
tenets of his religious sect. And the most outrageous thing he does to his community is his
attempt to study German, Hitlers language, to study Freud. Though Saunders comes to
know about Dannys secret venture into library reading secular books, he remains silent.
Saunders knew he would never change his son by any reproach, guidance or philosophy.

45
He knew his son was bright enough to retaliate any suggestion put forth by anyone to
justify his point.
No one can win Danny with words but only with silence. Saunders as a father and a
great scholar understands this malady and the only key to this predicament he found was to
discontinue talking with his son and to cultivate a generous soul. What can I do? he
asked softly, I can no longer speak to my son. The Master of the Universe gave me a
brilliant son, a phenomenon. And I cannot speak to him...You gave me a brilliant son, and I
have thanked you for million times. But u had to make him so brilliant? (P159)
Reb Saunders figured out Dannys intense yearning to know about world and its
mysteries augmented day by day. He feared that his son would end up with a miserable
death like that of his brother, who ventured after worldly knowledge closing his eyes to his
Creator and His creation. His brother was like Danny with sharp and brilliant mind.
He was proud, haughty, impatient with less brilliant minds, grasping in its search
for knowledge the way a conqueror grasps for power. His mind could not understand pain;
it was indifferent to and impatient with suffering. It was even impatient with the illness of
its own body. He left to study in Odessa for higher studies and died in a gas chamber.
Saunders anticipated this same fate would happen to Danny if he is not raised carefully.
Saunders himself was brought up by his father in silence. When he was a child, his father
used to wake him up in the middle of the night, so that he would cry. He would wake him
and tell him the stories of destruction of Jerusalem and the sufferings of the people of
Israel, and he would cry. For years Saunders suffered this routine.
Once his father even took him to visit a hospital packed with the poor, the beggars,
to listen to them talk. My father himself never talked to me, except when we studied
together. He taught me with silence. He taught me to look into myself, to find my own
strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul (P265). When his people
asked why he was so silent with his son, he said that he did not like to talk that words are
cruel, words play tricks, they distort what is in the heart, they conceal the heart, the heart
speaks through silence.
As Saunders grew up he grasped the impact of his fathers silence on his character
and mind. He was able to build on a generous and compassionate heart in himself without
going astray like his brother. Saunders hoped that this method would benefit his son also to

46
develop a pure soul and imposed it on him. And gradually Danny too began to
understand that there is a buried meaning underlying in this deliberate silence of his father.
As he grows up he feels that he can listen to silence and learn from it. He
understands that it has a quality and a dimension all its own. He senses that it talks to him
and he feels himself alive in it. Without any external aid or counsel from his father he
identifies the pain of the world with the help of his fathers silence. With great enthusiasm
Danny explains to Reuven what he has learned from silence; ...it has a strange, beautiful
texture. It doesnt always talk. Sometimes-sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of
the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.(P 249).
One learns of the pain of others by suffering ones own pain, by turning inside
oneself and by finding ones own soul. And it is important to know of pain and suffering. It
destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of
how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend on God. Though for years
Danny was bewildered and frightened with his fathers silence, he always trusted him and
never hated him. And when he was old enough to understand, he realised that his father
was trying to cultivate the humane qualities of compassion and sympathy for others
through pain and suffering with the aid of silence. His fathers silence caused pain in his
soul which leads to introspection and he suffered uncomplaining without finding remedy to
this distress. But eventually through his suffering he recognized a soul in himself, a soul
which could help him to realise his whole purpose as a human being to love and share the
sufferings of his fellow beings.
Here Saunders effectual weapon- silence played its part in moulding his sons
character and personality which created in him an untainted soul and helped him to realise
his true self. Silence -a surrogate to words in The Chosen Chaim Potoks working title for
The Chosen was A Time for Silence. Silence is present throughout the novel, although its
importance is obscure until the novels resolution. Potok often inserts the word silence in
the text, leaving the reader to figure out its meaning. For instance, Reuven notes that a
warm silence, not in the least bit awkward passes between him and Danny. At first
glance, this use of the word silence seems unrelated to the mysterious silence between
Danny and his father.

47
But later, one learns that silence, like words, can help people better understand each
other. Reb Saunders reveals his reasons for his silence toward Danny in the end. By
depriving Danny of a certain physical stimulus, Reb Saunders forces him to cultivate other
senses of perception. In other words, the imposed silence forces Danny to mature. Dannys
experience with silence parallels Reuvens experience with physical blindness and his
silent suffering in the hospital, forcing him to turn inward, and thus develop a better sense
of his soul, a greater empathy for others, and a better sense of the world and his role in it.
Yet Potok does not completely endorse Reb Saunders treatment of Danny.
When Reuven meets Danny, he is not accustomed to silence. You and Your father
with his crazy silences and explosions, (P244) Reuven flings at Danny. Reuvens
relationship with his father is based on a constant, easy flow of conversation; as a friend,
David Malter is a good listener and offers sound advice. As a result, Reuven thinks of
silence as something strange, dark, and empty, and he considers Reb Saunderss silence
toward Danny inexplicable and cruel. At the end of the novel, after Reb Saunders explains
his silence, Reuven and his father continue to wonder whether its benefits outweigh its
drawbacks. But they understand that it was the appropriate way of communication
employed by Saunders to educate his son who could speak more than milliion words A
father can bring up a child anyway he wishes...what a price to pay for a soul (P244) says
David Malter.
Danny and David Malter do not speak after their encounter in the hospital until the
very end of the book; Reuven and Danny have silence imposed upon their friendship by
Reb Saunders; David Malter imposes a kind of silence on Reuven by refusing to explain
Reb Saunderss way of raising Danny; Reuven imposes a silence on Reb Saunders when he
ignores the Saunders requests for conversation; and there exist a silence between Reuven
and Mr.Meritt which communicates their intense pain on knowing Billys unsuccessful
surgery which results in his permanent blindness.
Again, Potok shows that silence exists everywhere, in many forms, and has as much
meaning in a relationship as words. But all this deliberate or indeliberate silence between
the characters had its purpose. The silence between Saunders and Malter showed their
mutual respect for each other in dedicating their life for their people more than their
antipathy towards each other on relegious views. Malters silence on Reuvens enquiry on

48
Saunders deliberate silence on Danny explains Malters reluctance to reveal the motive of
Saunders which could be unveiled eventually by Saunders himself and he wanted his son to
understand its impact by himself observing Danny and Saunders. Its for Reb Saunders to
explain...I cannot explain what I do not completely understand. I cannot do it with my
students, and I cannot do it with my son.(P257) justifies David Malter.

Reuvens silence on Saunders invitation to his home explicated his

resentment on Saunders callous method between his son Danny and himself.I
didnt want to see Reb Saunders. I hated him as much now as I had when he had
forced his silence between me and Danny. (P257) narrated Reuven. The two-year
long silence between Danny and Reuven, imposed by Reb Saunders, is also rich in
communicative interactions between the two friends. I hated silence between us
and thought it unimaginable that Danny and his father never really talked. Silence
was ugly, it was black, it leered, it was cancerous, it was death. I hated it, and I
hated Reb Saunders for forcing it upon me and his son.(P221) thought Reuven.
But gradually it helped Danny and Reuven to understand how much they
were dependant on each other and loved each other, and how awfully they missed
each others presence and comradeship especially in hard times. When Reuvens
father was admitted in the hospital, he wished Dannys support and assistance. But
even in silence Danny was able to communicate his feelings and concern for Reuven
more powerfully than word. The look on Dannys face, though when I saw him for
the first time, helped a little. He passed me in the hallway, his face a suffering mask
of pain and compassion. I thought for a moment he would speak to me, but he
didnt. Instead, he brushed against me and managed to touch my hand for a second.
His touch and his eyes spoke the words that his lips couldnt.(P228) narrated
Reuven. A loving silence often has more power to heal and to connect than the most
well-intentioned words.
Though silence appears grave generally, it is one of the pervading elements
and a symbol that give insight into major characters psyche in the novel. Reb
Saunders suffers in silence for his entire tribe slayed ruthlessly in the carnage

49

plotted by Hitler. He gets succumbed to silence as he comes to know about the

holocaust in Germany. He is always despondent and miserable. He couldnt talk as
his suffering was beyond words could explain. And Dannys father was forever
Silent, withdrawn, his dark eyes turned inward, brooding, as if witnessing a sea of
suffering he alone could see(P183) observed Reuven. Saunders was worn-out and
sometimes at the kitchen table he begin to cry suddenly, and he would get up and
walk out of the room, then return a few minutes later and resume eating causing fear
and anxiety in his family members.
The annihilation of six million Jews was something beyond his soul could
perceive. He would always sit lost in thought and he wept in silence feeling the
torment of his people in distant lands. He never gave outlet to his suffering other
than through his silent lament while taking the meals. He must be weeping for his
people who wandered without food or shelter and also being smothered to death in
concentration camps. His silence communicated how much he cared and suffered
for his people.
The importance of silence and its form as a path to the soul and medium of
communication is seen prevailing all throughout the novel. There are numerous
instances in the book where both Danny and Reuven both receive and process
information in a non-verbal form. Silence is more eloquent than words (Thomas
Carlyle). It communicates more than words through the realisation of characters
inner voice. Perhaps if one find there is a silence between oneself and ones loved
ones, it is time that we realised that he or she wants you to understand those
unspoken words by yourself, listening to your soul and Potok has succeeded
amazingly in explicating this fact in his novel The Chosen Conclusion
The epigraph to Book Three of The Chosen is a quotation from Talmud that
reads, A word is worth one coin; silence is worth two.-Talmud, the book is a
collection of Jewish laws, stories and teaching that explain Torah by which Reb
Saunders raises his son Danny. In accordance with the teaching of the Talmud, Reb
Saunders never speaks to Danny except when they are discussing the Torah. At the

50

end of the novel, Reb Saunders explains that the purpose of this silence is to teach
his son to have compassion in his soul.
Ironically, silence talks. Potok through the characters Reb Saunders and
Danny Saunders unveils the worth of silence. It enables a person to ponder deeply
the suffering of the world. By remaining silent, a person can hear other peoples
cries for help and understanding, a psychological process. A person who always
blabber of his troubles pay heed only to his or her own words, but a person who is
quiet listens the pleadings of others as that person hear the pain of the world in
that silence and finds empathy in his soul for other sufferers.
By reason of employing silence in all, all nook and corner in the novel The
Chosen, one can assume that Potok is using silence as a modus operandi- a way of
performing a task or action in his novel. With the help of Silence, Potok makes his
character Reb Saunders cultivates the humane qualities such as charity, humility,
leniency and forbearance in his son. By substituting silence for words he
communicates more evidently the feelings and doubts that plagued the mind of his
characters. When Shakespeare used soliloquy to unravel the inner feelings of a
character, Potok used silence to manifest his characters inner turmoil and
apprehension.
The connection between David Malter and Danny Saunders is an important one in
the novel, for it lends weight to the idea that Danny Saunders is exceptionally gifted in
some regard while making the friendship between Reuven and Danny in some sense the
work of destiny by tightening the focus of these characters' worlds. Potok portrays the life
of Danny Saunders as if, outside of family, Danny Saunders only has interaction with
David Malter and then his son. And, by building up the monumental talents of Danny
Saunders, Potok makes clear that, although Reuven Malter is the narrator of the story, the
central theme of story will turn to Danny. The Chosen tells the story of two teenage Jewish
American boys, Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders, who learn the value of friendship
despite certain intra-faith and intra-cultural differences. The 15-year-olds first encounter
each other in the early 1940s when they, playing for their respective school baseball teams,

51
face off in a community rival game. The contest between the two teams entails more than a
mere competition between opponents; it involves the rather bitter conflict between two
sects of the Jewish faith. Narrated in the first person by Reuven, TheChosen details how
Dannys teams deep Hasidic faith causes team members to view Reuvens teams less
strict observance of Jewish religion as being indicative of character. Therefore, a mere
sports competition ultimately devolves into a moral and ethical battle. As Reuven intimates,
The fun and excitement was out of it now. Somehow the yeshiva team had translated this
afternoons baseball game into a conflict between what they regarded as their righteousness
and our sinfulness (P24).
In the novels first chapter, Reuven and Danny find themselves facing each other
not only in a battle of sportsmanship, but also in a battle of wit. Each tries to intimidate the
other during one inning when Reuven is pitching to Danny. Both are key players for their
teams, and this particular play is crucial to each teams potential victory. Staring each other
down and determined to outperform and outwit the other, Reuven and Danny declare an
almost personal war. After two strikes and one ball, the next play is significant. Danny,
determined not to be humiliated by what he considers a physically and morally inferior
team, hits the ball with such force that it strikes Reuven in the face, shattering his glasses
and injuring his left eye. Reuvens team loses by one point, and the defeated boy is rushed
to the hospital by his coach.
Thus begins the unlikely relationship of Danny and Reuven. In the hospital Reuven
undergoes surgery on his eye. He befriends his two roommates, a young blind boy Billy
Merrit and the adult Tony Savo, a former boxer. Both patients help Reuven to pass the time
as he recovers from his operation. He must wait for a few days to see whether or not any
permanent damage has been done. Reuvens father, a high school teacher and scholar, is
very concerned about his sons prognosis. He visits Reuven daily and tries to impress upon
his son the importance of controlling his anger at Danny. Because Reuven believes that
Danny deliberately struck him, he finds difficulty in forgiving the boys actions. Because
Mr. Malters health is already compromised, Reuven blames Danny for causing his father
additional pain. As Reuven begins to recover, however, and as he experiences compassion
for his roommates, whose circumstances are far more precarious than his, his anger
subsides somewhat, and he begins to focus on other matters. Reuven marvels at how young

52
Billy, plagued with total blindness, is so pleasant and engaging. Reuven promises both
Billy and Billys father Roger that he will call and visit after he and Billy are released. With
this, Reuven is encouraged to focus on possibilities rather than disappointments. With the
radio that Mr. Malter supplies him, Reuven stays abreast of increased U.S. involvement in
World War II. The conflict abroad and the resultant loss of life make Reuvens condition
pale in comparison.
Reuvens positive outlook is temporarily thwarted, however, when Danny Saunders
appears one day in the hospital. Miffed that Danny has the audacity to present himself
Reuven expresses both anger and disgust at Danny. Refusing to accept his apology, Reuven
belittles Danny, curses him, and makes him feel even worse for his actions during game.
Realizing that he will make no inroad with Reuven on this day, Danny departs feeling
frustrated and somewhat demoralized.
Later, when Mr. Malter visits his son and Reuven divulges what happened, Mr
Malter scolds his son for his behaviour, admonishing him to accept the apology and to
listen to whatever Danny has to share. On the next day, undaunted yet again, Danny
returns, this time refusing to be swayed by Reuvens anger. Reuven, however, receives
cordially, and the two engage in a meaningful conversation, not only about the game and
Dannys remorse about it, but also about the actual feelings Danny experienced on the day
of the game (the hatred he felt for Reuven and his team). Danny is now determined to come
to terms with those feelings, and he wants to continue a dialogue with Reuven so that they
can better understand their intra-faith differences.
A Hasidic Jew, whose conservative black attire and side curls distinguish him from
others, Danny is being groomed to assume his fathers place as rabbi one day. Rabbi Isaac
Saunders, a self-righteous man determined to instill in his son strict adherence to Talmudic
law, brooks no disobedience from Danny. Now struggling with his own commitment to the
conservative faith, Danny questions the extent to which the faith led him to harbor such
animosity toward Reuven during the game. Admitting that he wanted actually to kill
Reuven, Danny now needs to analyze that impulse. He requires open and honest dialogue
with his nemesis/friend. Reuven, whose father encourages analysis and interrogation and
the free exchange of ideas, is poised for such conversation.

53
Each boy does have something to offer the other. Their lives are both similar and
different. Reuven, whose father wants him to be a mathematician and university teacher,
wants instead to be a rabbi. Danny, whose father wants him to be a rabbi, would rather be a
psychologist. On the other hand, Reuven has a father who listens to him and encourages
father-son dialogue, while Dannys father adheres to very strict codes of child-rearing. He
practices silence with Danny, engaging in conversation only when the two are studying
the Talmud together. Danny needs someone with whom he can share ideas in an honest and
trustworthy fashion. When Reuven tells his father that he thinks he and Danny will become
friends, Mr. Malter is pleased. He encourages Reuven to make Danny his true friend,
reminding Reuven that each person requires the company of at least two other persons in
life: a teacher and a friend.
When Danny returns for another visit, Reuven finally understands why his father
has prodded him to become Dannys friend. Mr. Malter is already present, and Reuven
discovers that Danny and Mr. Malter already know each other, though Danny did not know
until now that Mr. Malter is, in fact, Reuvens father. Some weeks before, Danny happened
upon Mr. Malter in the library, and he asked the stranger to suggest to him some books to
read. Danny, a very bright boy, desires knowledge beyond only religious texts. Mr. Malter
and Danny have been conversing about intellectual ideas and about the suggested
readings for quite a while. Even though Mr. Malter has known that Dannys father would
disapprove of Dannys broad reading tastes, he justifies his involvement by arguing that if
Danny is going to read outside the prescribed Jewish canon anyway, he ought to have some
authoritative guidance. Once Danny and Reuven survive their initial shock about Dannys
past interaction with Mr. Malter, they agree to develop their friendship once Reuven is
released from the hospital.
Mr. Malter is very pleased that two obviously bright and fairly strongwilled young
men have found each other. They have in each other channels through which to express
their intellectual energies. The softball game that resulted in Reuvens injury was held on a
Sunday. Reuven is released from the hospital on the following Friday, and on Saturday he
accompanies Danny to Rabbi Saunderss synagogue for evening services so that the rabbi
can assess Reuvens suitability to be Dannys friend. Finding Dannys father to be both

54
detached and kind, Reuven is still confirmed in his belief that Rabbi Saunders is somewhat
of a tyrant. That a father would not engage in friendly conversation with his elder son
(Danny has a younger brother and a younger sister), Reuven finds appalling. Nevertheless,
Reuven suffers through his interview/test for Dannys sake. While attending service,
Reuven learns of the weekly ritual that Rabbi Saunders foists upon Danny. During his
lecture/sermon the rabbi deliberately punctuates his presentation with factual errors, after
which he questions Danny on the accuracy of the lesson. That Danny would be subjected
to this public spectacle is horrifying for Reuven. Disallowed, however, from sympathizing
for very long with Danny, Reuven is also challenged by Rabbi Saunders with regard to the
accuracy of the lecture.
Initially dumbfounded, Reuven answers the rabbis questions satisfactorily, proving
his intellectual prowess and his worthiness of a friendship with Danny. After the service,
Rabbi Saunders congratulates Reuven on his performance and thanks him for befriending
Danny, all the while admitting, however, that he had his doubts about Dannys developing a
friendship with the son of David Malter, a non-Hasidic Jew and one whose scholarly
writings challenge the tenets that Rabbi Saunders holds so dear.
The following week Reuven returns to school and enjoys his celebrity status
among his peers; he is now a hero for having been injured during a ball game. Reuven
meets Danny after school at the library, and the two initiate what will be the beginning of
many conversations about faith, Hasidim, and the intellectual life. Danny has begun to read
more about Jewish history, and he is stunned to learn that not all historians report favorably
on Hasidim. Now reading Freud and deciding he must learn German, Danny is hungry for
the kind of knowledge that will further challenge his religious beliefs. The following
Saturday, Reuven joins Danny for a private teaching session with Rabbi Saunders. This day
will mark a significant turning point in the lives of all concerned. During a few moments of
privacy (while Danny is out of the room), Rabbi Saunders questions Reuven about the kind
of reading Danny is doing at the library, revealing to Reuven that he has known about
Dannys eclectic reading and about Dannys consultations with Reuvens father. Reuven is
shocked to learn of Rabbi Saunderss knowledge. The rabbi pleads with Reuven to tell him
all he knows, assuring Reuven that he will divulge nothing to Danny and that he is, in fact,

55
pleased that at the very least, Danny has Reuvens father to guide him in his reading.
Feeling trapped and traitorous, Reuven tells Rabbi Saunders everything.
After the session, while Danny is escorting Reuven part of the way home, Reuven
divulges to Danny all that transpired with Dannys father. Though miffed that his father
cannot talk to him, Danny is relieved to know that his father is aware of his reading and of
his long-term friendship with Reuvens father. Reuven still does not understand why Rabbi
Saunders cannot speak directly to his son. Later, Mr. Malter tries to explain to Reuven,
after Reuven describes to him what has happened, that Rabbi Saunders is acting in the only
way he knows how, given how he was raised and how he was taught to raise his son (with
silence and detachment). Reuven then becomes the vessel through whom father and son
communicate.
Reuven and Danny complete their school year and spend much time together
throughout the summer, with Danny making considerable progress in his study of Freud
and German. During the next school year, their friendship strengthens. The following
summer, Reuvens father becomes very ill and must be hospitalized. During this time,
Reuven moves in with the Saunders family and grows fond of them, even though he still
has reservations about the way Rabbi Saunders treats Danny. In the fall, the two enter
college together and support each other through this adjustment period. Reuven tackles
symbolic logic, while Danny questions the psychology departments commitment to broadbased knowledge.
By the winter of 1947, the friendship between Danny and Reuven is plagued with
its most challenging test. International efforts to establish a Jewish homeland to
compensate Jewish survivors for what they had lost before and during World War II gain
momentum. These Zionist activities David Malter supports with all of his waning energy. Rabbi Saunders, on the other hand, believes that a created Israeli state is a sacrilege
and undermines the law of the Torah. Both men are absolute in their convictions. When the
rabbi learns of Malters extreme activities, he forbids Danny from having any more to do
with the Malters. Reuven is heartbroken when he cannot even speak to Danny at college.
For two years, Danny and Reuven are kept apart.
During this time, David Malter intensifies his efforts in the interest of Israel. In the
winter of 194748, he suffers a heart attack and is hospitalized for weeks. Still, Reuven is

56
left to fend for himself. By the late spring of 1948, when Israel is established, Rabbi
Saunderss anti-Zionist activities have lost momentum. Still, his ban against the Malters
remains in effect for sometime thereafter. One day, Danny suddenly resumes his interaction
with Reuven.
By the novels end, Rabbi Saunders accepts Dannys decision not to enter the
rabbinate. After he has made peace with his sons choice, he instructs his congregation do
likewise. Both Danny and Reuven graduate summa cum laude, with Danny planning to
enter Columbia University in 1950 and Reuven spending the year studying for his smicha
(rabbinic ordination). Both men vow to remain friends, knowing of course that their lives
are changed forever.

Historical aspects of The Chosen

To get to know the intended function, it is also beneficent for the translator to
learn about several characteristics and historical aspects of The Chosen. An important
theme within this book is the clash between the liberal and orthodox Jews. Chaim Potok
expounds on these clashes. Jewish children oftentimes turned their backs on Judaism
later in life. They became defenders of the socialistic or the Democratic Party.
Orthodox Judaism was regarded as something that belonged to the past. It did
not fit into their new world. It did find its way into the American lifestyle. They did not
notice the impending tragedy coming to Europe. They saw anti-Semitism rise and even
in their surroundings there were groups of Nazis. When young Jewish boys reached the
age of their bar mitzvah, they were pulled in different directions. On the one side there
was the modern view about Judaism, on the other side there was the non-religious
Zionistic movement. These clashes between liberal and orthodox Jews are detailed in
Chaim Potoks writings.
In The Chosen Reuven wants to become a rabbi of his own will but Danny, who
is destined to become a rabbi by following into the footsteps of his father, eventually
turns his back on Judaism. This theme finds its expression within another important
aspect of Jewish American literature: its storytelling.
The Chosen revolves around Jewish characters that are very much known by
their capability for story-telling. Reuvens father tells his son about the Zionistic

57

movement but Dannys father is a fervent defender of the Orhodox Jewish faith. Both
Dannys and Reuvens fathers tell in a narrative form throughout the story. In the first
fragment for example, Reuvens father tells his son about the sages and historical
stories of the Jewish people. While sipping his tea, he speaks in a slow voice about the
history and the old legends of his ancestors.
The first fragment depicted for this research, for example, tells about the dark
age of the thirteenth century in which the Jewish people found a way of escape in
Poland. However, their habitation in Poland was peaceful only for a short period of
time. Soon war was unleashed upon the Jewish people. In this time of trouble, people
who were called Masters of the Good Name sprang up from among the people. During
these periods of oppression, people turned toward men who said they had supernatural
powers. Their power came from their ability to manipulate the various letters that
spelled the mystical names of God. That is why they were called the Baal Shem Tovs.
Many of them took advantage of the people and their money. Their deeds were vile and
corrupt. However, they did not all act that way. A little later in the story a reference is
made towards the mystical rabbi Isral Ben Eleazar, a legendin Jewish history. He
became one of the great men who gave the Jews vision and hope during their exile. By
1736 he had founded the movement known as the Chasidism.
He was born in Eastern Europe in the year 1700. He was kind, saintly and godly,
and he seemed to want to help people not for the money they paid him but for the love
he had for them and so they came to call him the Baal Shem Tov - the Master of the
Good Name. He mingled with the people and talked to them about God and His Torah
in plain, simple language that they could easily understand. Jewish people know many
stories and legends about the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. The stories
of the Master are talked about in Jerusalem.
The Baal Shem Tovs movement came in the disastrous wake of Shabbtai Zvi, a
false Messiah who had gained enormous popularity in the Jewish community before
unfortunately converting to Islam. So the Baal Shem Tov Chasidim raised the moral
of the Jewish people once again. Chasidim, meaning pious and kind ones,maintained
for the common man that Gods presence is in all of ones surroundings and that a

58

person should serve God in every action, word and deed. The Baal Shem Tovs
movement demonstrated that the average Jewish person was important and could enjoy
a sense of wellbeing without being a great Torah or Talmudic scholar.
The Chasidic movement was in a sense a movement like the charismatic
movement of the Jewish people because of the emphasis on joyful worship. It was
undoubtedly controversial because of its emphasis on mystical Judaism, the kabbalah
and its book the Zohar. There has been more than one sage with the eminent title of the
Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name, but rabbi Ben Eleazar was one of the
legendary ones who founded the Chasidic movement among the Askinazi, the European
Jews. For many years the Baal Shem Tov also lived a secret life of studying holiness
and he did not practice his piety publicly but as a common labourer so he could be near
the uneducated Jews.
Rabbi Eleazars teachings emphasize the constant communion with God and
enthusiasm and joy, which are all essential to a relationship with God. These ideas were
not new to Judaism but he presented them to the unlearned masses of the Jewish
communities in the Diaspora. Even though they could not all be learned Torah scholars,
their task was to infuse their daily lives with spiritual meaning. To do this one must
constantly be aware of Gods presence and always, no matter what one is doing, know
His eyes are watching them. Moreover, one must have communion or companionship
with God. The Jews believe that telling faith building stories of the Bible and legends of
famous rabbis such as the Baal Shem Tov ensure a blessing, not only upon themselves
but upon their livelihood and their children and even their physical health. You can find
stories of the Baal Shem Tov not only on the internet but also in books concerning the
famous mystic.
Characteristics of the story are Jewish history, not only its factual history but
also its sages, biblical knowledge of Torah, Talmud and the Zohar, and its storytelling
voice. All these aspects should be taken into account by the translator as he transfers the
text. Chaim Potok is known for his writings around the world. He received international
fame but the details about the Torah, Talmud, Jewish history, etcetera, can be somewhat
new to its readers. In Holland, people are not that familiar with these aspects of Jewish

59

history. Everyone knows about the Bible and the oppression of the Jews in the Second
World War but the average reader knows much less about the Talmud, the Zohar and
etcetera. These books are not very easy to read.
However, that is why Chaim Potok became popular. He was a learned rabbi who
had a gift for transferring his knowledge in an easy-to-read-manner. The Chosen is a
novel with an exact notation of the spoken language, a concrete and informative
portrayal of the Jewish legends, and few details about the clashes in Jewish history.The
function of the target text should be to preserve these details and accurate portrayal of
the Jewish legends as much as possible. The effect will be a target text that is faithful to
careful transferring of cultural knowledge. This can be achieved by explaining several
difficult words or definitions such as Torah, Talmud, Baal Shem Tov and etcetera.
Finally, in addition to the intended function and the effect, the translator should
ask him or herself when was the text written? The translations show differences
among themselves due to the difference in time and place between the source text and
the target text. This is a difference on pragmatic micro level such as is outlined in the
model of Nord. The difference in place and time between source text and translation
always has a clear effect on the linguistic micro level. There is always a certain
difference in time because the English publication from 1967 is old and because it has
been translated in 1969 by D. Klein and in 1984 by Peter Sollet. There are very
significant differences in the use of certain words. The translation from 1969 shows
old-fashioned terms that are not used very often in this day and age.
Examples of this archaic use of language are terms such as voortsproot (De
rechtvaardige, p. 100), wier (Uitverkoren, p. 145). These terms are used several times
but make a strange impression on the modern reader. These differences on macro level
(in time) lead to changes on micro level if we pay attention to them. Here, the translator
can either decide to transfer these old-fashioned words or to use a better replacement. A
translator should ask himself if it is possible and even better to preserve the exotic
element. If not, some words are in dire need of change. This shows us that the translator
puts himself on the spot. In the words of Rodriquez, he or she acts as a traveller (le
voyageur) who looks at the previous translations and sees the artificial sentences, the

60

strange sounding words. All these things he modifies during his own journey to such a
degree that the constructions are no longer artificial but are flexible and smooth
sounding in the ears of the reader and the weird-sounding words are uttered smoothly
by the readers of the target audience.

Works Cited:

61

Cherry Kendra. The Third Force in Pscycholoy. About.com:Psychology. 5 May

2010.
<http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpscychology/a/hist_humanistic.htm>.
Judaism 101. Glossary of Jewish Terminology. <http://www.jewfaq.org/glo
ssary.htm> 23 April 2010.
Hill, Mars. Interview with Chaim Potok. Chaim Potok. 24 April 2010 <http:// pot
ok.lasierra.edu/potok.interviews.MHR.html
Potok, Chaim. The Chosen. New York: Fawcelt Crest Books, 1967. Salvatore,
Caroline. Review of The Chosen. Book world- Chicago Tribune. 22 April 2010. <
http://www.bookrags.com/criticism/the_chosen_(chaim_potok)
>.
The Free Dictionary. Passive resistance. <http:/encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.
com/passive_resistance>

Chapter Two:
Mr. Galanter takes Reuven to the Brooklyn Memorial Hospital. Mr. Galanter tells
Reuven that he has never seen a boy hit the ball like Danny did. Reuven worries about how
his father will react to learning that he is injured. Dr. Snydman, a man with a warm smile
whom Reuven likes immediately, examines his eye and tells him that he will be taken to the
eye ward. Reuven remains in a room with Tony Savo, another patient in his middle thirties
who asks how his head is, as well as Billy, a boy of ten or eleven with light blond hair.
Reuven introduces himself, but when Mr. Savo has trouble with his name he claims his
name is Robert. Mr. Savo was a professional prizefighter. Reuven tells Billy what he looks
like, since Billy cannot see. He was in a car accident. David Malter arrives, and tells
Reuven that there was glass in his eye and he will come home in a few days after his eye
heals, but Dr. Snydman is not sure whether the eye will totally heal. His father also tells

62
Reuven that Reb Saunders called to apologize for his son. Reuven tells his father how
Danny Saunders called him an apikoros and how he believes that Danny intended to hurt
him. David tells his son that he is forbidden to read until his eye heals, and gives him a
radio and his tefillin and prayer book.
Analysis:
Potok continues to develop the theme of assimilation in this chapter, in which
Reuven finds himself in Brooklyn Memorial Hospital among patients who know little
about Jewish culture. The encounter between Tony Savo and Reuven Malter illustrates this
theme: rather than correcting Mr. Savo when he has difficulty pronouncing his name,
Reuven merely tells him that his name is "Robert." This is the only major instance in the
novel in which Reuven or any of the major characters has significant contact with a gentile,
thus it is important to demonstrate the lack of understanding toward Jewish culture and the
separation of Reuven and, more significantly Danny, from the more secular American
society. Tony Savo's difficulty pronouncing Reuven's name is no sign of anti-Semitism, but
nevertheless shows the problems of total acceptance into American culture.
More importantly, the chapter establishes the relationship between Reuven Malter
and his father. Reuven holds a great sense of respect and admiration for his father, yet
worries greatly about how his father will react to his accident, perhaps even more than he
worries about his own fate. Potok also indicates the honesty and open communication
between Reuven and his father, as shown by Reuven's free admission of the argument
between him and Danny.
The introduction of Danny's father introduces two major themes that will
predominate The Chosen. The first is the relationship between fathers and sons; the direct
and open relationship between Reuven and David Malter will contrast between the
interaction between Danny and Reb Saunders that will be described in later chapters. The
second theme is intellectual scholarship. Each of the four major characters (Danny, Reuven
and their respective fathers) places a high value on different forms of study, whether of
mathematics or the Talmud. Reuven's inability to study while his eye heals provides a

63
major change in his daily routine, this showing the significant presence of study within his
household and his daily life.
Chapter Three:
Reuven awakes when he hears shouting and cheering. The radio is blaring as news
of D-Day arrives. Mr. Savo is awake and walking around the hallway, and Mrs. Carpenter,
a nurse, orders him to bed. Mr. Savo plays catch with Mickey, a little boy who has been in
the hospital nearly all of his six years. He tells Reuven how important the event is. Mr.
Savo asks Reuven if he will be a priest since he is religious, but Reuven says that his father
wants him to be a mathematician but he wants to be a rabbi.
Mr. Galanter visits and tells Reuven how lucky he is, and Danny Saunders also
visits. Danny apologizes and Reuven says that he does not hate him but asks why Danny is
only miserable and how he can sleep nights. The two argue, and Danny calls him an
apikoros once again. When David Malter visits, Reuven tells him about Danny's visit.
Danny visits a second time because something about the baseball game bothers him. He
says that he was angry because Reuven pitched him some curve balls, and as he speaks
about baseball he talks like an average boy despite the clothes of a Hasid. They discuss
their workload from the Talmud, and Danny has four blatt to do each day while Reuven
only manages with one. Danny says that he wants to be a psychologist, and admits that he
felt that he had to win on account of his father. Reuven thanks Danny for coming to see
him, and Danny promises to visit again tomorrow.
Analysis:
The news of D-Day that arrives at the hospital ward serves as a reminder of events
contemporary to the novel and helps to place the novel in a historic perspective. The setting
of the novel at the end of World War II is significant as preparation for later contemporary
events critical in The Chosen. The setting of the novel also mirrors the development of the
characters, for the characters find themselves at critical turning points that reflect the shifts
in a greater sociopolitical context.

64
The unlikely friendship between Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders develops in
this chapter, in which Potok contrasts these two protagonists in an interesting manner.
Despite Danny's Hasidic background and earlier behavior, Potok portrays Danny Saunders
as the more conventional and perhaps more secularly-minded of the two boys; Reuven is
surprised to find Danny, in the clothes of a Hasid, speaking about baseball like an average
boy, while Danny expresses interest in the very secular profession of psychology. In
contrast, the more liberal Reuven Malter wishes to become a rabbi, a profession seemingly
more suited to the Orthodox Danny. Even the names of these characters highlight this
ironic twist: while others have difficulty pronouncing the name Reuven Malter, Danny
Saunders has an English name that suggests assimilation.
Chapter Four:
David Malter enters a few minutes later, and tells Reuven that he will be able to go
home on Friday, but will not be able to read for another ten days. Reuven tells him how
Danny visited today, and he is surprised to learn how Reuven now likes Danny. David tells
his son how the Talmud instructs that a person should find a teacher and a friend. He tells
Reuven to make Danny Saunders his friend. Reuven awakes that night and finds that the
curtain had been drawn around Mr. Savo's bed, and he can hear people moving around. The
next morning, the curtain is still drawn. Billy and Reuven wonder what happened to Mr.
Savo. They hear him moan during the day, which frightens Reuven. Danny visits Reuven
again; they discuss religion, and Danny admits that sometimes he is not sure that he knows
what God wants. Danny asks if Reuven has read Darwin or Huxley, and he discusses
Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Danny says that he sometimes gets bored studying the
Talmud and that he will not like being a rabbi. Reuven tells Danny that he doesn't sound
like a Hasid. Danny claims he has no choice, for people expect him to take his father's
place. When David Malter arrives, Danny seems shocked to see him, as if he recognizes
him. David says that he has been meeting Danny in the library and recommending books
for him. The next day Mr. Savo returns to the ward, but Billy has been taken away. Dr.
Snydman takes the bandage off of Reuven's eye. Reuven asks about Billy, but Dr.
Snydman's answer is cryptic.

65
Analysis:
The friendship between Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter takes on a new and
more significant dimension in this chapter, which gives the first explanation for the title of
the novel. David Malter gives religious significance to the relationship between Danny
Saunders and his son, claiming that one must choose a friend and a teacher. This leads to
the question of who will be the teacher or whether or not Reuven is the one who has chosen
Danny. Potok answers this question later in the chapter, in which Reuven learns that David
Malter has been teaching Danny by advising him on books to read; the 'chosen' friend is
thus not Danny, but rather Reuven.
However, another meaning to 'the chosen' also emerges with regard to Danny
Saunders. If he is not the chosen friend and rather the one making the choice, he is chosen
by his father to succeed him as a rabbi. This illustrates what will be a central conflict of the
novel: while Danny's father wishes him to become a rabbi, Danny himself professes greater
interest in secular education that is perhaps contrary to his religious upbringing. There is
great irony in this, for Danny shows himself to have qualities of an apikoros despite his
grave accusations against Reuven for such behavior during the first chapter.
The connection between David Malter and Danny Saunders is an important one in
the novel, for it lends weight to the idea that Danny Saunders is exceptionally gifted in
some regard while making the friendship between Reuven and Danny in some sense the
work of destiny by tightening the focus of these characters' worlds. Potok portrays the life
of Danny Saunders as if, outside of family, Danny Saunders only has interaction with
David Malter and then his son. And, by building up the monumental talents of Danny
Saunders, Potok makes clear that, although Reuven Malter is the narrator of the story, the
central theme of story will turn to Danny. The Chosen tells the story of two teenage Jewish
American boys, Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders, who learn the value of friendship
despitecertain intrafaith and intracultural differences. The 15-year-olds firstencounter each
other in the early 1940s when they, playing for their re-spective school baseball teams, face
off in a community rival game. The contest between the two teams entails more than a

66
mere competition between opponents; it involves the rather bitter conflict between two
sects of the Jewish faith. Narrated in the first person by Reuven,
TheChosen details how Dannys teams deep Hasidic faith causes team members to view
Reuvens teams less strict observance of Jewish religion as being indicative of character.
Therefore, a mere sports competition ultimately devolves into a moral and ethical battle. As
Reuven intimates, The fun and excitement was out of it now. Somehow the yeshiva team
had translated this afternoons baseball game into a conflict between what they regarded as
their righteousness and our sinfulness (p24).
In the novels first chapter, Reuven and Danny find themselves facing each other
not only in a battle of sportsmanship, but also in a battle of wit. Each tries to intimidate the
other during one inning when Reuven is pitching to Danny. Both are key players for their
teams, and this particular play is crucial to each teams potential victory. Staring each other
down and determined to outperform and outwit the other, Reuven and Danny declare an
almost personal war. After two strikes and one ball, the next play is significant. Danny,
determined not to be humiliated by what he considers a physically and morally inferior
team, hits the ball with such force that it strikes Reuven in the face, shattering his glasses
and injuring his left eye. Reuvens team loses by one point, and the defeated boy is rushed
to the hospital by his coach.
Thus begins the unlikely relationship of Danny and Reuven. In the hospital Reuven
undergoes surgery on his eye. He befriends his two roommates, a young blind boy Billy
Merrit and the adult Tony Savo, a former boxer. Both patients help Reuven to pass the time
as he recovers from his operation. He must wait for a few days to see whether or not any
permanent damage has been done. Reuvens father, a high school teacher and scholar, is
very concerned about his sons prognosis. He visits Reuven daily and tries to impress upon
his son the importance of controlling his anger at Danny. Because Reuven believes that
Danny deliberately struck him, he finds difficulty in forgiving the boys actions. Because
Mr. Malters health is already compromised, Reuven blames Danny for causing his father
additional pain. As Reuven begins to recover, however, and as he experiences compassion
for his roommates, whose circumstances are far more precarious than his, his anger
subsides somewhat, and he begins to focus on other matters. Reuven marvels at how young
Billy, plagued with total blindness, is so pleasant and engaging. Reuven promises both

67
Billy and Billys father Roger that he will call and visit after he and Billy are released. With
this, Reuven is encouraged to focus on possibilities rather than disappointments. With the
radio that Mr. Malter supplies him, Reuven stays abreast of increased U.S. involvement in
World War II. The conflict abroad and the resultant loss of life make Reuvens
condition pale in comparison.
Reuvens positive outlook is temporarily thwarted, however, when Danny Saunders
appears one day in the hospital. Miffed that Danny has the audacity to present himself
Reuven expresses both anger and disgust at Danny. Refusing to accept his apology, Reuven
belittles Danny, curses him, and makes him feel even worse for his actions during game.
Realizing that he will make no inroad with Reuven on this day, Danny departs feeling
frustrated and somewhat demoralized.
Later, when Mr. Malter visits his son and Reuven divulges what happened, Mr
Malter scolds his son for his behavior, admonishing him to accept the apology and to listen
to whatever Danny has to share. On the next day, undaunted yet again, Danny returns, this
time refusing to be swayed by Reuvens anger. Reuven, however, receives cordially, and
the two engage in a meaningful conversation, not only about the game and Dannys
remorse about it, but also about the actual feelings Danny experienced on the day of the
game (the hatred he felt for Reuven and his team). Danny is now determined to come to
terms with those feelings, and he wants to continue a dialogue with Reuven so that they can
better understand their intrafaith differences. A Hasidic Jew, whose conservative black
attire and side curls distinguish him from others, Danny is being groomed to assume his
fathers place as rabbi one day. Rabbi Isaac Saunders, a self-righteous man determined to
instill in his son strict adherence to Talmudic law, brooks no disobedience from Danny.
Now struggling with his own commitment to the conservative faith, Danny questions the
extent to which the faith led him to harbor such animosity toward Reuven during the game.
Admitting that he wanted actually to kill Reuven, Danny now needs to analyze that
impulse. He requires open and honest dialogue with his nemesis/friend. Reuven, whose
father encourages analysis and interrogation and the free exchange of ideas, is poised for
such conversation.
Each boy does have something to offer the other. Their lives are both similar and
different. Reuven, whose father wants him to be a mathematician and university teacher,

68
wants instead to be a rabbi. Danny, whose father wants him to be a rabbi, would rather be a
psychologist. On the other hand, Reuven has a father who listens to him and encourages
father-son dialogue, while Dannys father adheres to very strict codes of child-rearing. He
practices silence with Danny, engaging in conversation only when the two are studying
the Talmud together. Danny needs someone with whom he can share ideas in an honest and
trustworthy fashion. When Reuven tells his father that he thinks he and Danny will become
friends, Mr. Malter is pleased. He encourages Reuven to make Danny his true friend,
reminding Reuven that each person requires the company of at least two other persons in
life: a teacher and a friend.
When Danny returns for another visit, Reuven finally understands why his father
has prodded him to become Dannys friend. Mr. Malter is already present, and Reuven
discovers that Danny and Mr. Malter already know each other, though Danny did not know
until now that Mr. Malter is, in fact, Reuvens father. Some weeks before, Danny happened
upon Mr. Malter in the library, and he asked the stranger to suggest to him some books to
read. Danny, a very bright boy, desires knowledge beyond only religious texts. Mr. Malter
and Danny have been conversing about intellectual ideas and about the suggested
readings for quite a while. Even though Mr. Malter has known that Dannys father would
disapprove of Dannys broad reading tastes, he justifies his involvement by arguing that if
Danny is going to read outside the prescribed Jewish canon anyway, he ought to have some
authoritative guidance. Once Danny and Reuven survive their initial shock about Dannys
past interaction with Mr. Malter, they agree to develop their friendship once Reuven is
released from the hospital.
Mr. Malter is very pleased that two obviously bright and fairly strongwilled young
men have found each other. They have in each other channels through which to express
their intellectual energies. The softball game that resulted in Reuvens injury was held on a
Sunday. Reuven is released from the hospital on the following Friday, and on Saturday he
accompanies Danny to Rabbi Saunderss synagogue for evening services so that the rabbi
can assess Reuvens suitability to be Dannys friend. Finding Dannys father to be both
detached and kind, Reuven is still confirmed in his belief that Rabbi Saunders is somewhat
of a tyrant. That a father would not engage in friendly conversation with his elder son
(Danny has a younger brother and a younger sister), Reuven finds appalling. Nevertheless,

69
Reuven suffers through his interview/test for Dannys sake. While attending service,
Reuven learns of the weekly ritual that Rabbi Saunders foists upon Danny. During his
lecture/sermon the rabbi deliberately punctuates his presentation with factual errors, after
which he questions Danny on the accuracy of the lesson. That Danny would be subjected
to this public spectacle is horrifying for Reuven. Disallowed, however, from sympathizing
for very long with Danny, Reuven is also challenged by Rabbi Saunders with regard to the
accuracy of the lecture.
Initially dumbfounded, Reuven answers the rabbis questions satisfactorily, proving
his intellectual prowess and his worthiness of a friendship with Danny. After the service,
Rabbi Saunders congratulates Reuven on his performance and thanks him for befriending
Danny, all the while admitting, however, that he had his doubts about Dannys developing a
friendship with the son of David Malter, a non-Hasidic Jew and one whose scholarly
writings challenge the tenets that Rabbi Saunders holds so dear.
The following week Reuven returns to school and enjoys his celebrity status
among his peers; he is now a hero for having been injured during a ball game. Reuven
meets Danny after school at the library, and the two initiate what will be the beginning of
many conversations about faith, Hasidim, and the intellectual life. Danny has begun to read
more about Jewish history, and he is stunned to learn that not all historians report favorably
on Hasidim. Now reading Freud and deciding he must learn German, Danny is hungry for
the kind of knowledge that will further challenge his religious beliefs. The following
Saturday, Reuven joins Danny for a private teaching session with Rabbi Saunders. This day
will mark a significant turning point in the lives of all concerned. During a few moments of
privacy (while Danny is out of the room), Rabbi Saunders questions Reuven about the kind
of reading Danny is doing at the library, revealing to Reuven that he has known about
Dannys eclectic reading and about Dannys consultations with Reuvens father. Reuven is
shocked to learn of Rabbi Saunderss knowledge. The rabbi pleads with Reuven to tell him
all he knows, assuring Reuven that he will divulge nothing to Danny and that he is, in fact,
pleased that at the very least, Danny has Reuvens father to guide him in his reading.
Feeling trapped and traitorous, Reuven tells Rabbi Saunders everything.
After the session, while Danny is escorting Reuven part of the way home, Reuven
divulges to Danny all that transpired with Dannys father. Though miffed that his father

70
cannot talk to him, Danny is relieved to know that his father is aware of his reading and of
his long-term friendship with Reuvens father. Reuven still does not understand why Rabbi
Saunders cannot speak directly to his son. Later, Mr. Malter tries to explain to Reuven,
after Reuven describes to him what has happened, that Rabbi Saunders is acting in the only
way he knows how, given how he was raised and how he was taught to raise his son (with
silence and detachment). Reuven then becomes the vessel through whom father and son
communicate.
Reuven and Danny complete their school year and spend much time together
throughout the summer, with Danny making considerable progress in his study of Freud
and German. During the next school year, their friendship strengthens. The following
summer, Reuvens father becomes very ill and must be hospitalized. During this time,
Reuven moves in with the Saunders family and grows fond of them, even though he still
has reservations about the way Rabbi Saunders treats Danny. In the fall, the two enter
college together and support each other through this adjustment period. Reuven tackles
symbolic logic, while Danny questions the psychology departments commitment to broadbased knowledge.
By the winter of 1947, the friendship between Danny and Reuven is plagued with
its most challenging test. International efforts to establish a Jewish homeland to
compensate Jewish survivors for what they had lost before and during World War II gain
momentum. These Zionist activities David Malter supports with all of his waning energy. Rabbi Saunders, on the other hand, believes that a created Israeli state is a sacrilege
and undermines the law of the Torah. Both men are absolute in their convictions. When the
rabbi learns of Malters extreme activities, he forbids Danny from having any more to do
with the Malters. Reuven is heartbroken when he cannot even speak to Danny at college.
For two years, Danny and Reuven are kept apart.
During this time, David Malter intensifies his efforts in the interest of Israel. In the
winter of 194748, he suffers a heart attack and is hospitalized for weeks. Still, Reuven is
left to fend for himself. By the late spring of 1948, when Israel is established, Rabbi
Saunderss anti-Zionist activities have lost momentum. Still, his ban against the Malters
remains in effect for sometime thereafter. One day, Danny suddenly resumes his interaction
with Reuven.

71
By the novels end, Rabbi Saunders accepts Dannys decision not to enter the
rabbinate. After he has made peace with his sons choice, he instructs his congregation do
likewise. Both Danny and Reuven graduate summa cum laude, with Danny planning to
enter Columbia University in 1950 and Reuven spending the year studying for his smicha
(rabbinic ordination). Both men vow to remain friends, knowing of course that their lives
are changed forever.

72

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Chosen
is set in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New
York, during the mid- to late-1940s. This area is inhabited largely by
Jewish citizens of various Hasidic sects, for whom the education of
their children is the highest priority. Both Danny and Reuven, in large
measure, benefit from this emphasis on education. The novel is contextualized not only by place and religion, but also by historical event.
The evolution of World War II figures prominently as the backdrop
for Reuven and Dannys emerging friendship. The war they declare
on the baseball field symbolizes on American soil the important war
being fought in Europe. War and conflict as historical concepts are located in
The Chosen
as thematic concepts as well.
By the time Danny and Reuven meet in the spring of 1944, the
United States has been involved in World War II for over two years,
having entered the conflict after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In the spring of 1944, the Allies (mainly Britain, the
United States, and the Soviet Union) have begun to make great
progress against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). When
Allied forces storm Normandy, France (on what would be known as
128 race and racism in literature

D-Day), the end of the war is imminent, and the defeat of Hitler and
his evil regime is soon to be realized within months, by mid-1945.
The peace established with the end of World War II echoes the
emergent peace established between Reuven and Danny. Interestingly
enough, just as World War II reaches its climax in 1944, Danny and

73
Reuven have their greatest conflict. Even when Danny attempts to befriend Reuven in those waning days in the spring of 1944, Reuven is
distrustful of his baseball nemesis. Over the course of the next year,
however, Danny and Reuven find common ground, even though
Reuven is still leery of Rabbi Saunders and quite critical of his parental
interaction with Danny (or lack thereof). Still, within weeks of the accident that brought the two boys together, Rabbi Saunders makes
Reuven his, albeit uneasy, ally when he asks Reuven about Dannys
reading habits. Slowly, the Malter-Saunders conflict is eased (at least
for a while). By the summer of 1945, a month before President Truman orders the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and officially
brings an end to World War II, Reuven moves into the Saunders
household while his father recuperates in the hospital from his first
heart attack. Reuven has officially entered the sanctuary of his former
enemy, and even though peace has been established, Reuven and
Danny are still different people, representing different factions,
Hasidic and non-Hasidic, much in the same way that the political/
international opponents fighting in World War II represent distinct
factions.
The peace, by virtue of its newness, is fragile. Within a couple of
years, Danny and Reuven will be forced again to be political opponents when Rabbi Saunders takes issue with David Malters endorsement of a Jewish state. The sons suffer the brunt of this conflict when
old frictions and fractures are once again exposed. Similarly, the Soviet
Union, the United States ally in World War II, will emerge as a
staunch enemy as the Cold War unfolds in the 1950s (the decade approached at the end of the novel).
The Chosen,
originally published in 1967, is in many ways influenced by events that occurred not only before World War II, but also
in the interim years between the end of World War II and the latter
1960s. From the time the United Nations partitions the former Palestine state and officially creates Israel in 1948, major conflicts arise between the Palestinians (and their Arab supporters) and the Israelis
(Jews). Soon after Israel is established, the Arab-Israeli War of
19481949 ensues, with five Arab nations (Egypt, Transjordan, Syria,
Lebanon, and Iraq) immediately attacking Israel. From 1948 on,
chaim potok,
the chosen
(1967) 129

many other conflicts occur, with Israel increasingly occupying territory beyond its official 1948 boundaries. In what is known as the SixDay War of 1967, Israel expanded into the Golan Heights (formerly
of Syria), into the West Bank (formerly of Jordan), and into the Gaza
Strip (formerly of Egypt). Palestinians who had occupied the Israeli
area before 1948 flee to surrounding countries, and even more flee
the areas occupied by Israel in 1967. Tensions have remained con-

74
stant throughout the second half of the twentieth century and now
into the twenty-first century.
These historical tensions, like those in World War II, certainly inform the narrative tensions prevalent in
The Chosen.
While the World
War II conflict contextualizes the Reuven-Danny war, the Arab-Israeli
conflict mirrors, to some extent, the battle between Rabbi Saunders
and David Malter. Though these two conflicts do not occur simultaneously (by the time Israel is officially established, Rabbi Saunders has
rescinded his ban against the Malters), they are similar in regard to
their intensity. Just as the Arabs and Israelis are violently committed to
their beliefs regarding land occupation, Rabbi Saunders and David
Malter are uncompromisingly devoted to their beliefs. Rabbi Saunders
is willing to cause his son (and himself, in fact) emotional harm by intensifying his unspoken feud with Malter and the Zionists. So devoted to the cause of Zionism is David Malter that he risks his physical
health in rallying help for the Israeli state. Ironically, David Malter has
implied that Rabbi Saunders, while a learned and sincere man, is
plagued by fanaticism. Yet Malter also becomes a fanatic when he
commits himself to the partition effort. Though each man, in his estimation, has at heart the interest of the Jewish people, their intracultural conflict diminishes the very humanity they strive to protect.
Unfortunately, history continues to showcase humankinds inhumanity to humankind.

LITERARY ANALYSIS
The Chosen
details the pain caused by intracultural conflict and the
prejudices harbored by two subcultural factions. The Hasidic perspective, represented by Rabbi Saunders, holds that non-Hasidic Jews are
not as devoted to Jewish law and are thus inferior to Hasidim. Theirs
is a conservative, fundamental view of the Talmud. Tradition must
rule in the Hasidic world, with no latitude for interrogation or subversive analysis. Rabbi Saunderss yeshiva teaches in Yiddish in respect
for tradition, while criticizing the less traditional schools for teaching
130 race and racism in literature

in Hebrew. Believing Hebrew to be the Holy Word, the rabbis group

thinks it to be unspeakable to utter the language in a common school.
As leader of his group and of his family, Rabbi Saunders expects unconditional loyalty from his flock. He prepares Danny to assume future rabbinic responsibility, and as the elder son, Danny is to accept
these duties graciously and with serious intent. The non-Hasidic perspective, represented by David Malter, while respecting the more restrictive faction, believes in a more practical religion, one consistent
with real-world changes and experiences. The non-Hasidim bemoan
what they believe to be the fanaticism of the Hasidim. Malter ques-

75
tions any group that holds itself to be self-righteous and superior as
though its religious perspective alone is the only truth.
This conflict is presented via the metaphor of blindness. The issue
of blindness is broached early in the novel when Reuvens physical
sight is threatened by the unfortunate baseball accident. Before and
after his surgery, he faces the possibility that he may lose sight in his
left eye. This battle between sightedness and blindness is compounded
by the presence of Billy Merrit, Reuvens hospital mate who is completely blind. These tumultuous circumstances surrounding physical
blindness and the possibility of blindness underscore the main questions posed throughout the novel: To what extent is physical sightedness a gift and to what extent is it a hindrance? How do people see
(i.e., view, perceive) their world and their fellow man?
On the one hand, everyone in the novel would probably agree that
sightedness is a gift and that anyone given a choice would opt for sight
instead of blindness. However, physical sight ironically offers persons
the privilege of bias when they so easily pass judgment on others by
virtue of how they look or how they present themselves. Just as
Reuven judges Danny because of his black clothes, his black hat, and
his ear locks, the Hasidim judge the non-Hasidim for their lack of
these accessories. Once each sees the other, barriers are erected, beliefs
are established, and fears are made real. In this way, sightedness, in
fact, becomes a hindrance from true human interaction and communication. Bias is made acceptable because of sight. The Hasidim and
non-Hasidim alike seem to say, I see you; you are different. We have
no basis for communion.
On the other hand, when one observes the blind Billy Merrit, one
finds him to be humane, kind, and receptive to all with whom he
comes in contact. He is not gifted with the privilege of bias. He cannot pass judgment on people the moment he sees them. Instead, he
must listen to people and feel their presence and their intent.
chaim potok,
the chosen
(1967) 131

Though some might see Billys world as restricted because he is blind,

it is, in fact, broad and fraught with possibility. To Billy, every human
being has the potential of being a friend. Moreover, Billy knows what
true loss is; therefore, he does not take companionship for granted as
do the sighted. He does not have the luxury of choosing friends by
how they look. When one exists in a world where physical attributes
truly do not matter, he is poised to receive and accept people on a
higher set of principles. When one considers Billys circumstance
(sight stripped from an innocent child), human conflict is made all the
more petty, especially such conflict between intracultural, intrareligious groups.
The issue of blindness is manipulated in the novel again when one
more closely assesses Rabbi Saunderss blindness. Ironically, he ex-

76
presses blind faith in his religion, evident even in his strict adherence
to Talmudic principle. Opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state
because imperfect mankind is creating it, he is willing to wait for the
arrival of the Messiah before a Jewish land is founded. Yet he does not
extend such blind faith to human beings who have shown him nothing but respect and gratitude. That he would forbid his son from further interaction with the only friend he has known and cause both
Danny and Reuven undue emotional strain is indicative of a tyrannical
strain that he justifies because it is grounded in this warped blind religious faith. Here blindness is both positive and negative again. That
Rabbi Saunders is committed to religion is, of course, commendable;
however, when this religion diminishes the very humanity that would
make him an effective rabbi, then the blind faith is corrupted and distorted.
That sightedness can act as a disability is confirmed when Reuven
finds himself puzzled by Dannys demeanor. Trying to explain
Dannys persona to his father, Reuven declares: The way he acts and
talks doesnt seem to fit what he wears and the way he looks. Its like
two different people (75). Indeed, Danny is two different people:
the one Reuven expected him to be and the one he really is. Reuven
learns that he cannot define others one-dimensionally. Danny is a
complex figure. Had Reuven never suffered the injury and had he simply passed Danny coincidentally on the street, he would have made assumptions that would never have been challenged. The balls striking
his head and his eye figuratively shocks him out of his comfort zone
and forces him to crack the surface of the individual, rather than relying only on the surface to define the individual.
132 race and racism in literature

The novel teaches as its main lesson the necessity of human beings
in finding a common bond, a common motivation. That shared desire
will reveal other similarities previously unknown. The very reason that
Reuvens team is playing Dannys team proves this point. The various
Jewish parochial schools form baseball teams and community leagues
to prove their American allegiance during World War II. In their role
as devoted Americans, they find a shared space that has resulted in a
solid bond between two young men whose friendship would have remained elusive. Having discovered each other, however, Reuven and
Danny also find themselves personifying the very essence of true
friendship. As Reuvens father explains, echoing a Greek philosopher,
...
two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one
soul (74). That a Hasidic Jew and a non-Hasid would be described
as sharing the same soul (given the belief of Hasidim that non-Hasidim were doomed to hell) forces one to consider and even embrace
human interaction beyond established boundaries of prejudice and
suspicion. David Malter also insists that [h]onest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship (219). Here,

77
Mr. Malter allows persons to retain their individuality while at the
same time remaining loyal to their role in the human family.
The novels title is replete with meanings that underscore this denunciation of prejudice and separation. It is obvious that Danny is
chosen by the circumstance of birth to assume the rabbinic role of
his father. Yet Reuven has been chosen by his own inclination and
desire to assume the rabbinic role. Both Danny and Reuven have been
chosen to bring unity to the overall Jewish community and to remind this community that the Jewish are the chosen people, regardless of intersectional differences. As these two boys grow into
young men, their maturity brings about a maturity in the communities they represent. Though sectional rivalries will continue to plague
humanity (after all, human beings are still imperfect), at the very least,
Reuven and Danny have offered a template for further advancement
and liberation.

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the chosen
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Fishman, Sylvia Barack.
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Heilman, Samuel C., and Steven M. Cohen.
Cosmopolitans and Parochials:
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Jews Not Zionists Official Web site, Current Issues, www.jewsnotzionists.
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The Chosen.
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