The Chosen

by Chaim Potok

He would study a chapter of a novel the same way he studied a page of Talmud, taking the text apart and trying to figure out how it was put together.

The “Shelishter Rebbe” told me one day: “Be careful with words, they’re dangerous. Beware of them. They beget demons or angels. It’s up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as to give free rein to words.”

the first draft of the text he wrote on the right-hand page; revisions and notes for later consideration he wrote on the left-hand facing page—sometimes

sometimes in different colors, often with arrows pointing wildly at one important change or another.

“For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other’s existence.”

it introduces gentile and secular Jewish readers alike to the unfamiliar worlds of Hasidism and Orthodox Judaism and, in so doing, explores pervasive and well-known themes of religious conflict, father-son relationships, teenage emotion, the complexities of friendship, and the challenges of rejecting tradition to follow one’s own path.

The Chosen is set against two interlocking historical backdrops: World War II and the Holocaust (embodied in the character of Reb Saunders) and Zionism and the founding of the State of Israel (represented by David Malter).

the position that the Jewish state should be founded by men and women, and the belief that it could not be established without divine intervention and the coming of the Messiah.

Potok’s lifelong fascination with what he termed “core-to-core culture confrontation,” a concept that was the fulcrum of all his writing.

Raised to believe that Judaism made a fundamental difference in the world, Potok found himself, in Asia, in a world where Judaism meant nothing and where, to his astonishment, he witnessed deep faith in the heart of pagan idol worship. His cultural encounters in Korea and Japan relativized his Jewishness, Americanness, and Westernness simultaneously, creating a fundamental paradigm shift:

Potok developed his theory of core-to-core culture confrontation, which he would continue to cultivate throughout his life as a writer. He would come to call this concept the “invisible scaffolding” of all his novels.

betweenperson. Such an individual will cross the boundaries of his or her own culture and embrace life-enhancing elements from alien worlds.”

Zwischenmensch—a person, a novelist, occupying the interstitial space between Western secular humanism and religious orthodoxy.

Sam Bluefarb concentrates on Reuven and Danny’s friendship and suggests that they are symbolically two halves of a single personality, each searching for its complement—a dynamic he calls a “doppelgänger effect.”

this odd tale of two boys from different backgrounds spinning out their adolescent lives in an arcane realm of Brooklyn homes, streets, playgrounds, libraries, houses of workshop, and academies of learning around the closing years of the Second World War.”

It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.

True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice.

About three or four such Hasidic sects populated the area in which Danny and I grew up, each with its own rabbi, its own little synagogue, its own customs, its own fierce loyalties. On

dreaming of Shabbat and festivals when they could close their stores and turn their attention to their prayers, their rabbi, their God.

so each student carried a double burden: Hebrew studies in the mornings and English studies in the afternoons. The test of intellectual excellence, however, had been reduced by tradition and unvoiced unanimity to a single area of study: Talmud. Virtuosity in Talmud was the achievement most sought after by every student of a yeshiva, for it was the automatic guarantee of a reputation for brilliance.

This latter yeshiva was somewhat looked down upon by the students of other Jewish parochial schools of Brooklyn: it offered more English subjects than the required minimum, and it taught its Jewish subjects in Hebrew rather than Yiddish.

sincerity. To the rabbis who taught in the Jewish parochial schools, baseball was an evil waste of time, a spawn of the potentially assimilationist English portion of the yeshiva day.

I told myself that I did not like his Hasidic-bred sense of superiority and that it would be a great pleasure to defeat him and his team in this afternoon’s game.

I was an apikoros to Danny Saunders, despite my belief in God and Torah, because I did not have side curls and was attending a parochial school where too many English subjects were offered and where Jewish subjects were taught in Hebrew instead of Yiddish, both unheard-of sins, the former because it took time away from the study of Torah, the latter because Hebrew was the Holy Tongue and to use it in ordinary classroom discourse was a

desecration of God’s Name.

What annoyed him was their fanatic sense of righteousness, their absolute certainty that they and they alone had God’s ear, and every other Jew was wrong, totally wrong, a sinner, a hypocrite, an apikoros, and doomed, therefore, to burn in hell.

as if all the previous years of my life had led me somehow to this one ball game, and all the future years of my life would depend upon its outcome.

“Things are always what they seem to be, Reuven? Since when?”

“How does it feel to know you’ve made someone blind in one eye?” I asked him. I had recovered from my surprise at his presence and was feeling the anger beginning to come back.

“I’ve seen them around. My manager had an uncle like that. Real religious guy. Fanatic.

I was feeling a little regretful that I had been so angry with Danny Saunders.

“You remember what the Talmud says. If a person comes to apologize for having hurt you, you must listen and forgive him.”

“What I tried to tell you, Reuven, is that when a person comes to talk to you, you should be patient and listen. Especially if he has hurt you in any

“Take it real slow, kid. Takes a while to get the old strength back.”

“You were pretty rotten yesterday, you know,” Danny Saunders said. “I’m sorry about that.” I was surprised at how happy I was to see him.

“What I thought was rotten was the way you wouldn’t let me talk.”

don’t understand why I wanted to kill you.” I stared at him. “It’s really bothering me.” “Well, I should hope so,” I said.

“Two blatt?” I stared at him. That was four pages of Talmud a day. If I did one page a day, I was delighted. “Don’t you have any English work at all?”

“I have no choice. It’s an inherited position.” “You mean you wouldn’t become a rabbi if you had a choice?”

“What would you be if you didn’t become a rabbi?” Danny Saunders asked. “A mathematician,” I said. “That’s what my father wants me to be.”

“I sort of feel I could be more useful to people as a rabbi. To our own people, I mean. You know, not everyone is religious, like you or me.

“He reads a lot, but he never writes. He says that words distort what a person really feels in his heart.

He told me once he wishes everyone could talk in silence.”

“No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate,” my father said quietly. “That is the way the world is.”

Then my father nodded. “People are not always what they seem to be,” he said softly. “That is

the way the world is, Reuven.”

“Reuven, listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other?”

“Yes. You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul.”

“Make him your friend,” he said again, and cleared his throat noisily.

Sometimes I get the feeling that’s all we are—ants. Do you ever feel that way?”