The Chosen
Chaim Potok
I think I first read Chaim Potok's novels when I was a high school student -- this would have been around 1970. He was a favorite of my mother's. The Chosen and its sequel The Promise are probably two of the best novels I have ever read. They are the story of a friendship between two boys, Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders. I enjoy stories about friendship much more than romances (most of which bore me because they are formulaic), and this is a great friendship story. It's a kind of Montague/Capulet friendship, in the sense that Reuven and Danny come from communities that are bitterly opposed to each other on political and religious grounds.
Reuven is an observant Jew whose father teaches Talmud in a religious seminary. Danny is a Hasid -- his father is the Rebbe of the Brooklyn Hasidic community in which they live. After the end of World War II Reuven's father becomes a prominent Zionist. Danny's father is bitterly and dogmatically opposed to Zionism, on the grounds that Jews should not return to the Holy Land before the Messiah comes.
Danny is believed by his father and all in his father's community to be a genius, and indeed he is brilliant. It transpires that Reuven is equally brilliant. This is most obviously seen when, in the Talmud class that he and Danny share, the teacher asks Reuven to explain a particularly obscure and difficult text. Reuven foresaw that he would be asked and was prepared. The teacher allows him to spend days of class time analyzing the text in question, until even the Hasidic students come to admire his intellect even while despising him for his Zionism.
This is not at all a good summary of the plot of The Chosen -- many more things happen. It is a summary of what I saw as the core of the plot, and what remains with me even fifty years later.
And there was one other thing. Reuven and Danny and their families are deeply religious. I was myself raised as Christian, and my friends were both Christians and Jews. It never seemed to matter all that much -- they had different weekend schedules, and they celebrated Hanukkah instead of Christmas. Those Jewish friends of mine would not have been regarded by Reuven and Danny's families as truly Jewish. And by the same token, born-again Christians (who were much thinner on the ground in 1970 than they are today) would not have regarded my family as truly Christian.
The Chosen showed me people who see the entire world through the lens of religion, and who judge everything through that lens. It was a revelation to me. There were no such people in my daily life. To people who see the world in this way, those such as myself and my friends are of no account.
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