The Chosen is a novel by Chaim Potok that was first published in 1967. It tells the story of Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, two teenage boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s. Danny is the son of a Hasidic rabbi, while Reuven is the son of a Conservative rabbi. Despite their differences in religion and culture, the two boys form a close friendship through their shared love of intellectual pursuits.
The novel explores themes of identity, faith, and family through the relationship between Danny and Reuven. As they grow and learn from each other, they are challenged to grapple with their own beliefs and values, as well as those of their respective communities.
One of the main conflicts in The Chosen is the tension between tradition and modernity. Danny's father, Reb Saunders, is a strict and traditional Hasidic rabbi who believes in the importance of preserving the cultural and religious traditions of his community. On the other hand, Reuven's father, David Malter, is a more progressive thinker who encourages his son to pursue higher education and engage with the secular world.
As Danny and Reuven navigate the expectations of their families and communities, they also face personal challenges and struggles. Danny is torn between his duty to follow in his father's footsteps as a rabbi and his desire to pursue his own interests and passions. Reuven, meanwhile, struggles to come to terms with the trauma he experienced during World War II and his own feelings of guilt and responsibility as a member of the Jewish community.
Ultimately, The Chosen is a coming-of-age story that portrays the complexities and challenges of growing up and finding one's place in the world. Through their friendship, Danny and Reuven learn to respect and appreciate each other's differences and find common ground in their shared love of learning and intellectual pursuits. The novel is a thought-provoking exploration of faith, identity, and the human experience.
The Chosen (Reuven Malther, #1) by Chaim Potok
You must learn to listen to silence, Reuven. So, not the best foot for a relationship to get off on. The main character is a high-school aged boy who lost his mother years ago and is raised by his father, a teacher at a Jewish school, and a housekeeper. Reuven learns that Danny possesses a photographic memory, enabling him to study an astonishing amount of Talmud per day set by his father , yet still leaving him time to pursue other subjects. The historic insights into WWII and its aftermath, particularly the realization among American Jews of the extent of the Holocaust and the formation of the state of Israel, were fascinating. This leads to the big clash in the book, Zionism.
Barry Wimpfheimer as a part of an Adult Education course on the Talmud that I recently took part in at Northwestern University. The book immerses the reader not only in a fundamentalist atmosphere, but also in a man's world, in which women are almost totally absent. How to make a unity of such disparate entitlesāthe war in Europe, a childhood eye injury, the mesmerizing quality and dark menace of certain books, Freud, religion, psychology, mathematical logic, sacred texts, scientific text criticism, Zionism, the Holocaust. The pivotal character of the narration is Reuven, and through Danny, we come to know how Reuven is making all kinds of compromises in order to be a part of the society he is living. I had lost interest in psychology after 3 college courses, and I continued to lose interest in it when some of the Jewish men that I had dated back then wanted to analyze me. Reuven notices one particularly strong batter on the yeshiva team, whom Davey identifies as Danny Saunders, the son of Reb Saunders. Potok's writing is very direct as well as descriptive, and he has such a great way of writing.
Chaim Potok: Psychological Transformation in "The Chosen"
I remembered there was a reason I liked it so much back in high school. This book was not therapy. It is a story of the friendship between two very different Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn. Everything they did was locked so firmly into the requirements of the plot that even the crises seemed predictable. We hold respect for God and the methods used for communication. The story is about a kind of transformation that a Palestininian young man undergoes to be part of the society he is living.
The book was beautiful and memorable. The efforts as has been taken by Reuven are very much for the sake of making him a part of the society, irrespective if what he originally is. These stories usually work best when the audience is in sympathy with both sets of traditions; this is not the right time, for example, for a movie about a Moonie learning to get along with a follower of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Reuven notes that he probably would never have met Danny if not for the competitive Jewish sports leagues created during World War II. I have no choice. After four years of study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America he was ordained as a Conservative rabbi.
He then explains that only once in a generation a mind like Danny's is born, and that Danny cannot help his need for knowledge, but that Danny is also a lonely boy who needs a friend. Ah, what a curse it is, what an anguish it is to have a Daniel, whose mind is like a pearl, like a sun. This struggle between holding on to the traditions of one's culture in an ever-changing world and taking on the culture of the adopted home country was also faced by Danny and Reuven, both of whom were raised in a different environment from their parents and have found themselves in such a situation. At one meal, Reuven mentions that some feel it is time to establish a Jewish state, which sends Rabbi Saunders into a fierce tirade against Zionism: for the ultra-orthodox, a secular Jewish state established by man without the coming of the Messiah is against God's will. The next week, Reuven goes to the Saunders house again to study Talmud with Danny and his father.
This is the most amazing description that I consider to be very appropriate to American culture. Both boys are exceptional scholars. . As these factors contribute in shaping their religious identities and personalities, they try to strike a balance between traditional family values and modernity in the world around them. There is the Hasidic Jews along with the Modern Orthodox Jews, with some kind of tolerance with Christianity. Reuven sits out for the rest of the game and watches his team lose eight to seven. After two years, just as the violence in Palestine comes to an end the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war and Reuven's father has recovered from his heart attack, Danny is allowed to resume his friendship with Reuven because the Jewish state is now a fact, and no longer a point of dissension.
FREE The Chosen PDF Book by Chaim Potok (1967) Read Online or Free Downlaod
You can tell each father loves his son immensely, but in different ways. In spite of their differences they become great friends, spending many evenings and Sabbaths together. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ever retreat from again. Reuven would like to become a rabbi, though his father would like him to pursue academia. And my Daniel enjoyed the story, he enjoyed the last terrible page, because when he finished it he realized for the first time what a memory he had. I still shake my head at his actions but the power of this story is that it is not only unforgettable but it opens the curtain on Hasidic culture and contrasts it with the more modern but still devout Jew.
Wimpfheimer's life, as shared with his class. Soon afterward Reuven's father has a second heart attack followed by a lengthy hospitalization. His father saw that his mind was so keen that his soul would be lost if there was not some awful tragedy to break his soul into a living space. Analysis: Chapter 1 Potok focuses on a handful of motifs and themes in The Chosen, carefully weaving them throughout the entire novel. He goes on to explain why he used silence to bring up his son: he saw from an early age that his son was brilliant, but also saw that he had no soul. It is here that the role played by Reuven Malter becomes sensitive.
