For In the Beginning’s David Lurie, given his father’s very militant Jewishness, all was in confrontation with a radical new way of looking at the central text of all Western traditions—the Bible. The Book of Lights, the most difficult of Potok’s novels to read and fully grasp, the novel about the atomic bomb, dealt with one individual’s confrontation with that core element of Western civilization and its effect on the world of Asia. Davita’s Harp, a book about a young woman’s struggles, was based in part on his wife’s experiences in an Orthodox world.
