God never comes alive as a character in The Chosen. He is not felt as a presence in the fictive construct, as he is, for example, in The Magician of Lublin when he unexpectedly answers a sinner’s prayer. Singer was a fantasist—and something of a mystic as well. Chaim was a naturalist; the eruption of the uncanny into everyday life is absent from his work. But, like Singer, Chaim was a religious artist, and the essence of his religion was the relation between man and his fellows.
