890 Potok, Chaim
faith. The profound and meaningful relationships
between fathers, sons, and friends is both nourished
and challenged by Judaism, which is the foundation
of this deeply religious book.
The novel begins with a high school baseball
game between two schools, one an Orthodox yeshiva
(a Jewish parochial school) and the other a consider-
ably less traditional Jewish school. The tense conflict
between these groups is heightened by the slurs the
Hasidic boys hurl at their foes. Potok writes, “Some-
time during the half inning one of the members of
the yeshiva team had shouted at us in Yiddish, ‘Burn
in Hell, you apikorsim!’ ” The evocation of the word
apikorsim, a slander for secular Jews, moves a player
on the other team to comment that “all of us knew
that this was not just another ball game.” Indeed, the
hatred on the field erupts when the pitcher Reuven
Malter’s eye is smashed by Danny Saunders’s base
hit. Reuven is rushed to the hospital, where he learns
that he will need surgery to repair the damage. What
follows is a burgeoning relationship between two
young men whose religious paths differ vastly.
Although Reuven and Danny have been influ-
enced to follow a different set of rules and values
by their fathers, both of them share a deep respect
for studying the Torah, the most important text in
Judaism. Potok explains, “Virtuosity on Talmud was
the achievement most sought after by every student
of a yeshiva, for it was the automatic guarantee of
a reputation for brilliance.” Danny’s photographic
memory makes him an authority on Talmud scrip-
ture at a very young age, while Reuven also proves
his mastery as an adroit college student. Reuven
manages to gain access into Danny’s home life by
demonstrating his Talmudic knowledge in the pres-
ence of Rabbi Isaac Saunders, Danny’s strict father,
a Hasidic rabbi who escaped persecution in Europe
to found a devout religious community in Brooklyn,
New York. Danny struggles to break free of his
father’s strictures by reading forbidden texts, study-
ing the German language, and eventually choosing
psychology as a field of study rather than inherit his
father’s position as rabbi of their congregation.
The struggle between Danny and his father is
a primary conflict in the text, one that hinges on
Danny’s refusal to accept all of his father’s religious
values and beliefs. Reuven’s father, David Malter,
cites single-mindedness as Hasidism’s major down-
fall: “What annoyed him was their fanatic sense
of righteousness, their absolute certainty that they
and they alone had God’s ear, and every other Jew
was wrong, totally wrong, a sinner, a hypocrite, an
apikoros, and doomed, therefore, to burn in hell.”
As Danny grows up and his passion for studying
the human mind deepens, he strays from what his
father has taught him. Reb Saunders isolates his
son from Reuven Malter’s company once he learns
that Reuven’s father is an outspoken Zionist leader.
Zionism, a movement to secure a Jewish state in
Palestine, does not fit into Reb Saunders’s sense
of righteousness. He says to Reuven, “Your father
is a great scholar. But what he writes, ah, what he
writes!”
In fact, it is the conflict between David Malter’s
avowal of Zionism and Reb Saunders’s distaste for
it that causes immense turmoil in the later half of
the novel. Once the United Nations votes in favor
of the Partition Plan, dividing Jerusalem into Arab
and Jewish states, David Malter is “almost incoher-
ent with joy,” and “[t]he death of the six million
Jews had finally been given meaning, he kept say-
ing over and over again.” However, Reb Saunders’s
camp bemoans the continued bloodshed that has
resulted from the UN plan. “ ‘Hitler wasn’t enough,’ ”
they said, “ ‘Now more Jewish blood, more slaughter.
What does the world want from us? Six million isn’t
enough? More Jews have to die?’ ”
Religion plays a significant role in the two wars
that prevail in The Chosen. Initially, World War II
looms over Reuven as he recovers in his hospital bed
from his eye injury at Brooklyn Memorial Hospital.
That war takes a toll on both fathers and sons as
each man suffers from knowing what great crimes
were committed against his people. Finally, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict brings David Malter and
Reb Saunders great physical and mental hardship.
David Malter suffers from a heart attack under the
stress of his involvement in the Zionist movement.
Both of these wars caused great devastation to
Jewish people and to the characters in The Chosen.
Likewise, the internal suffering of Reuven Malter,
and especially Danny Saunders, is very much the
result of their religious beliefs and responsibilities.
Jeana Hrepich