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A review by thegbrl
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
5.0
"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. When his people would ask him why he was so silent with his son, he would say to them that he did not like to talk, words are cruel, words play tricks, they distort what is in the heart, they conceal the heart, the heart speaks through silence. One learns of the pain of others by suffering one's own pain, he would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one's own soul. And it is important to know of pain... 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 upon the Master of the Universe."
The Chosen is a bildungsroman for our times. It follows the adolescence of Reuven and Danny, two Jewish boys living in New York City; the former Modern Orthodox, and the latter Hasid. We see the story through the eyes of Reuven. The journey begins on a warm Sunday in 1944, when they first meet during an altercation on the baseball field, and ends with Danny and Reuven finally graduating from College. Reuven is sensitive and perceptive, and struggles with his own demons. He remains both awestruck and sympathetic to Danny’s “mind without a soul”, including the curse of his photographic memory and his unnatural thirst for knowledge.
Though set against the burgeoning mortality and horrors of post-World War II America, and the creation of the State of Israel, novelist Shalom Auslander captured its essence best: "[It] is primarily about fathers. And about sons. And about fathers and sons." He notes how easy it is to get caught up in the political and religious underpinnings of the text; whether of Zionism, the Holocaust, or the nature of Judaism itself. Yet The Chosen is a novel about perception: of retrospection, introspection, and foresight, and how these might shape our understanding of friendship, loneliness, and the perils of silence.
There is a chilling beauty in the way Potok holds a mirror up to the fragments of our modern world. As Danny says, rather jarringly, "It's awful to have someone give you an image of like that of yourself." With depth and sensitivity, Potok examines the intricacies of one human experience in such a way that it might become universal, as the plight of the Jewish people is historic and current. I can agree that goyim will never understand a Jew’s obligation to "cry for the sufferings of his people". I also sense that Potok writes with clairvoyance in this regard, perhaps because he has seen through his own eyes, and lived as a Jew. There is prose that is rich and sweet, and lingers in the mind like morning dew on blades of grass, bringing to life Reuven's narrative voice, which is both affecting and refreshing. Whilst this novel requires background knowledge on Judaism, including an awareness of the Talmud, the Gematriya, the Kabbalah and the Mishnah, it can be accessible to anyone because of the writing style.
The title's allusion to the Abrahamic covenant haunts me most, because the novel might be for something greater than the Chosen People of God. Rather, it is a novel for all those who have loved, or been loved, by a father. Potok’s unsung talent is a great tragedy of Modern American literature.
The Chosen is a bildungsroman for our times. It follows the adolescence of Reuven and Danny, two Jewish boys living in New York City; the former Modern Orthodox, and the latter Hasid. We see the story through the eyes of Reuven. The journey begins on a warm Sunday in 1944, when they first meet during an altercation on the baseball field, and ends with Danny and Reuven finally graduating from College. Reuven is sensitive and perceptive, and struggles with his own demons. He remains both awestruck and sympathetic to Danny’s “mind without a soul”, including the curse of his photographic memory and his unnatural thirst for knowledge.
Though set against the burgeoning mortality and horrors of post-World War II America, and the creation of the State of Israel, novelist Shalom Auslander captured its essence best: "[It] is primarily about fathers. And about sons. And about fathers and sons." He notes how easy it is to get caught up in the political and religious underpinnings of the text; whether of Zionism, the Holocaust, or the nature of Judaism itself. Yet The Chosen is a novel about perception: of retrospection, introspection, and foresight, and how these might shape our understanding of friendship, loneliness, and the perils of silence.
There is a chilling beauty in the way Potok holds a mirror up to the fragments of our modern world. As Danny says, rather jarringly, "It's awful to have someone give you an image of like that of yourself." With depth and sensitivity, Potok examines the intricacies of one human experience in such a way that it might become universal, as the plight of the Jewish people is historic and current. I can agree that goyim will never understand a Jew’s obligation to "cry for the sufferings of his people". I also sense that Potok writes with clairvoyance in this regard, perhaps because he has seen through his own eyes, and lived as a Jew. There is prose that is rich and sweet, and lingers in the mind like morning dew on blades of grass, bringing to life Reuven's narrative voice, which is both affecting and refreshing. Whilst this novel requires background knowledge on Judaism, including an awareness of the Talmud, the Gematriya, the Kabbalah and the Mishnah, it can be accessible to anyone because of the writing style.
The title's allusion to the Abrahamic covenant haunts me most, because the novel might be for something greater than the Chosen People of God. Rather, it is a novel for all those who have loved, or been loved, by a father. Potok’s unsung talent is a great tragedy of Modern American literature.