The Chosen and The Promise by Chaim Potok
**Overview of "The Chosen" and "The Promise" by Chaim Potok**
"The Chosen" and its sequel "The Promise" by Chaim Potok explore the intricate dynamics of friendship, identity, and faith through the lives of two Jewish boys, Danny Saunders and Reuvan Malter, growing up in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn. The narrative begins with Danny, who is under pressure to succeed his father as the leader of their Hasidic sect, feeling confined by the silence imposed by his father, Reb Saunders. In contrast, Reuvan, the son of a secular teacher, embodies a more open approach to learning and modernity. Their friendship, complicated by cultural and familial expectations, evolves amidst profound historical events, including the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
In "The Promise," the story continues as the two young men navigate adulthood, confronting challenges related to faith, tradition, and personal aspirations. They interact with other characters, including Professor Abraham Gordon, whose unorthodox views on Judaism provoke crises within the community, particularly affecting his son Michael. The narrative emphasizes themes of silence, the complexities of paternal relationships, and the pursuit of knowledge as both boys strive to find meaning in their lives. Potok highlights the balancing act between maintaining one’s heritage and embracing the wider world, portraying the characters' journeys as heroic endeavors shaped by their choices.
On this Page
The Chosen and The Promise by Chaim Potok
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published:The Chosen, 1967; The Promise, 1969
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The Chosen met with popular success upon publication, despite its being concerned with a small and narrow Hasidic Jewish community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The story of Danny Saunders, son of the imperious and strictly Orthodox Reb Saunders, and Danny’s friend Reuvan Malter, son of a teacher at a Jewish yeshiva (parochial school), has universal implications: Can the culture of one’s early years be transcended without being denied?
Danny has been chosen by his father to be the next leader of the Hasidic sect, but Danny feels trapped. His father, in an effort to impart a compassionate soul to his genius son, has raised him in silence; all the while, however, Danny has been exploring secular psychology at the library under the guidance of David Malter, Reuvan’s father.
After the two boys clash at a baseball game, their friendship gradually develops, though when David Malter becomes active in the project of building a new Jewish homeland in Palestine after the revelations from the German concentration camps, Reb Saunders imposes silence upon Danny’s friendship with Reuvan. The rebbe is saddened by the news of the Holocaust, but he believes that a new state of Israel can be built only by the Messiah, not by human politics.
Following the creation of Israel as a state in 1948, the ban between Danny and Reuvan is lifted; the two must now explain to Reb Saunders that Danny will not wear the rebbe’s mantle but will instead pursue his study of psychology. In a climactic conversation, Reb explains to Danny (through Reuvan) that the silence he had experienced will allow him to hear the cries of the world. The rebbe himself cries and finally speaks directly to his son, this time as a father, not as a teacher. Reb Saunders accepts Danny’s decision; Levi, Danny’s younger brother, will assume the mantle as the leader of the Hasids.
Danny’s own freedom is mirrored in news reports of the Israeli war of liberation. Ironically, Reuvan, raised by his father to be a keeper of the Commandments yet open to the world’s learning, becomes a rabbi after studying, as Potok himself did, at an Orthodox seminary. Danny, who has removed his distinctive Hasidic adornments of earlocks and beard, receives his degree from Columbia University.
The Promise continues the story of the two men, now in their twenties, and intertwines their lives with those of Professor Abraham Gordon and his family. Gordon has earned the disdain of Orthodox Jews for his unorthodox questioning of Jewish verities, such as the literal truth of the Hebrew Bible. When Gordon’s fourteen-year-old son, Michael, explodes in a violent denunciation of Orthodoxy for its excommunication of his father, Michael is taken to a psychological treatment center to be helped by Danny Saunders.
Reuvan’s father, David, has also published a book, one criticizing the reliability of certain texts of the Talmud. This book has earned him the wrath of Reuvan’s teacher Rev Kalman. The Holocaust survivor fears that modernism will make deadly inroads into Orthodoxy. Reuvan can thus understand Michael’s feelings, though David Malter has taught his own son about the value of Hasidic Orthodoxy in preserving Judaism in the midst of terrible suffering.
Michael refuses to talk until Danny isolates him with silence. Broken at last, Michael voices hatred for his father, whose condemnation Michael himself is forced to share. Once having expressed his true feelings, Michael can begin to heal. Meanwhile, Gordon’s daughter Rachel, at first Reuvan’s date, falls in love with Danny, and the two are soon married, a union of the deeply religious psychologist with the cosmopolitan secularist.
The Chosen and The Promise share in their cores a profound love of learning, and if both Reuvan and Danny perhaps seem too perfect, they express well the ideas of silence and its power, the varying forms of love of fathers for sons, and the journey of two young men seeking to reconcile their faiths with the wider world of knowledge. David Malter had told his son Reuvan in The Chosen that a person must create his own meaning: Both Reuvan and Danny chose meaning that encompassed the past as well as the present, though each in his own way. Such choices, the novel suggests, are the stuff of heroism.
Bibliography
Abramson, Edward A. Chaim Potok. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
Greenstein, Stephen J. “The Chosen”: Notes. Lincoln, Nebr.: Cliff Notes, 1999.
Kauvar, Elaine M. “An Interview with Chaim Potok.” Contemporary Literature 28 (Fall, 1986): 290-317.
Potok, Chaim. “A Reply to a Semi-Sympathetic Critic.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 2 (Spring, 1976): 30-34.
Sternlicht, Sanford V. Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Studies in American Jewish Literature 4 (1985). Special Potok issue.
Walden, Daniel, ed. Conversations with Chaim Potok. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001.