Two boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, become friends in the 1940s. They are both fifteen, both Jewish, both highly intelligent, both have fathers who are rabbis, and both study at yeshivas (Orthodox Jewish schools). They have an enormous amount in common, but there is also a deep divide: Reuven Malter is modern Orthodox, and Danny Saunders is Hasidic ultra-orthodox.
Chaim Potok was born in 1929 and wrote The Chosen, his first novel, in 1967. He grew up in the milieu central to this book, and in the first few pages, outlines it briskly, vividly, and intriguingly for readers unfamiliar with the history of the orthodox Jewish-American community.
Danny’s block was heavily population by the followers of his father, Russian Hasidic Jews in somber garb, whose habits and frames of reference were born on the soil of the land they had abandoned. They drank tea from samovars, sipping it slowly through cubes of sugar held between their teeth; they ate the foods of their homeland […]
A block away lived another Hasidic sect, Jews from southern Poland, who walked the Brooklyn streets like specters, with their black hats, long black coats, black beards, and earlocks. These Jews had their own rabbi, their own dynastic ruler, who could trace his family’s position of rabbinic leadership back to the time of the Ba’al Shem Tov, the eighteenth-century founder of Hasidism […]
On a Shabbat or festival morning, the members of each sect could be seen walking to their respective synagogues, dressed in their particular garb, eager to pray with their particular rabbi and forget the tumult of the week and the hungry grabbing for money which they needed to feed their large families during the seemingly endless Depression.
What a marvellous encapsulation of a community, time and place in just a few paragraphs! It is very specific and detailed, touching on the distinct origins, history and habits of the groups, introducing a major character, Danny, and bringing the description back to the practical problems of the current time, all described in a calm, matter-of-fact style with just the hint of judgement that Reuven Malter’s fifteen-year-old eyes might apply.
Despite the commonalities, the two boys are visibly dissimilar. Reuven, the modern Orthodox teenager, wears normal, if very proper, clothes (suits, shirts, ties, pants), and has a mainstream haircut. Danny Saunders has the closely cropped hair, the long side earlocks, the beards (or beginnings of beards, for these adolescents), and the traditional garment with the fringes hanging outside their pants that is Hasidic garb.
The novel’s first event is a baseball game, thoroughly American yet also thoroughly unusual, since the two teams are from two different yeshivas. This game, it turns out, is no sportsmanlike expression of free play.
“We’re going to kill you apikorsim this afternoon.” He said it flatly, without a trace of expression in his voice. […]
The word had meant, originally, a Jew educated in Judaism who denied basic tenets of his faith, like the existence of God, the revelation, the resurrection of the dead. To people like [Danny’s father], it also meant any educated Jew who might be reading, say, Darwin, and who was not wearing side curls and fringes outside his trousers.
Reuven pitches, and Danny intentionally hits the ball straight back at him, giving Reuven a head injury, a concussion, and glass fragments in his eye. He spends a week in hospital, wondering if he will be blind in one eye, when Danny comes to apologize.
Despite or perhaps because of this inauspicious beginning, the boys become close friends.
Both boys admire and revere their fathers, albeit with fear and dread in Danny’s case. Studying the Torah is a dominant part of life for Orthodox Jews, and both boys have long Torah sessions with their fathers. As with many communities, reverence for the wisdom of the elders is strong. But here, the boys are allowed and in fact encouraged to debate and challenge the Torah interpretations put forward, which is strikingly unusual. I know of no other community where respect for the elderly is combined with such strong encouragement to disagree on religious matters. Passionate arguments are welcomed, but they must be backed up with detailed quotes from the Torah. Such excellent training for critical thinking!
At the same time, it is fully expected that the children will follow their fathers’ lifestyle rules without question. At one point in the novel, Danny is banned from meeting Reuven due to the political differences between their families, and for months these two close friends pass in hallways with no words exchanged, and only the very occasional glance in a classroom. It is fascinating how these teenagers, so intellectual and argumentative, are at the same time so compliant in some matters.
Men and women live largely segregated lives in Orthodox communities, and this is reflected in the novel. Reuven has no mother or sisters, and the Ukranian housekeeper is the only woman he has contact with. Danny has a sister and mother, and Reuven notices how pretty the sister is, but has no interaction with her either. This is a novel about boys and men.
World War II is ongoing, and the boys come of age just as it ends, and the horrific news of the concentration camps starts emerging. The schism between the Brooklyn sects deepens: the Hasidim are opposed to the formation of Israel, partly because of its secular leaders, and partly because they believe a Jewish homeland should be created only after the return of the Messiah. They see, in fact, the future of Jewry as centered in the United States, where, after the Holocaust, the majority of the world’s Jews live.
Potok’s writing is precise and detailed, and the dramatic events in the book are world events rather than happenings in the lives of the characters, but the book moves along quite briskly. And, as a bonus, it’s an excellent primer on how to study on and around a topic. Here’s Reuven in college, researching a passage:
After I was done memorizing the text [the passage of Talmud] and the commentaries, I began to go over the text again critically. I checked the Tamuldic cross-references for parallel texts and memorized whatever differences I found. I took the huge volumes of the Palestinian Talmud from my father’s library […] and checked its parallel discussions just to see how it differed from the discussions in the Babylonian Talmud. I worked carefully and methodically.
As in all good novels, the larger picture is described via the changes in the lives of the central characters. It is a vivid rendering of the Orthodox Jewish community in 1950s America, and is one of those books that ages very well indeed.
fascinating material in this novel, and how wonderful the writing was so strong too; thank you for such a lovely, detailed review.