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Jul. 5th, 2022 10:36 pmI've been wanting to reread Chaim Potok's The Chosen ever since I found out that (according to family lore) my great-aunt Esther (her memory for a grammar-persnickety blessing) helped Potok type & edit early versions of his manuscript, then had a falling-out with him because he didn't thank her in the acknowledgments. (Since she is not mentioned in the acknowledgments, I will never have the documentary evidence to prove this one way or the other, but they did attend the same synagogue during a relevant period.)
I also wanted to reread it because the one thing I remembered about the actual plot, other than 'baseball?', was that it was the first book I ever read in my childhood that presented the idea of the founding of Israel as a potentially controversial topic under active discussion. The version of anti-Zionism that Potok presents in The Chosen and that drives much of the drama of the back half of the book is an intensely Hasidic/Messianic anti-Zionism rather than a leftist/Yiddishist/diasporic/anticolonialist anti-Zionism and he is not at all sympathetic to it, but -- as someone who grew up with Israeli relatives and in very mainstream Conservative/Reform Jewish circles that took Support For Israel very much as the default -- it was still my first introduction to the concept that Jews might occasionally disagree on this particular element of What It Means To Be Jewish as much as we disagree about everything else.
For those who didn't read it in middle school, The Chosen is, of course, a book about Jews disagreeing; the protagonist is Reuven, the son of a progressive Modern Orthodox rabbi who also wants to be a rabbi even though his dad wants him to be a doctor, who meets his soulmate in Danny, the brilliant but unhappy son of a Hasidic leader, who wants to be a psychiatrist even though he's destined to succeed his father as rabbi. I don't use the word 'soulmate' lightly, btw. Reuven and Danny are SO INTENSE about each other -- they meet-dramatic during a baseball game where they are instantly overcome with passionate murderous intent towards each other, and then on their second meeting (in the hospital!) they exchange apologies and become immediately and mutually obsessed. At one point someone also calls them David and Jonathan so I do think Potok had at least an idea of what he was doing here.
If you note the little 'yikes' in this screencap I have shared, btw, that's not me; that's my friend George, the school child who previously owned the copy of The Chosen that I found in a used bookstore and used for this reread. George faithfully annotated the entire book with his impressions -- other favorites include 'meanies!', 'fathers are not good in this book'/'fathers actually good', and 'lol everyones killing it' during a particularly intense session of Talmudic scholarship -- and I regret to report that the grade on the front shows that his teacher did not appreciate his efforts as much as she could have. I'm very sorry, George; you extremely enhanced my reading experience and in my heart you got an A.
I also wanted to reread it because the one thing I remembered about the actual plot, other than 'baseball?', was that it was the first book I ever read in my childhood that presented the idea of the founding of Israel as a potentially controversial topic under active discussion. The version of anti-Zionism that Potok presents in The Chosen and that drives much of the drama of the back half of the book is an intensely Hasidic/Messianic anti-Zionism rather than a leftist/Yiddishist/diasporic/anticolonialist anti-Zionism and he is not at all sympathetic to it, but -- as someone who grew up with Israeli relatives and in very mainstream Conservative/Reform Jewish circles that took Support For Israel very much as the default -- it was still my first introduction to the concept that Jews might occasionally disagree on this particular element of What It Means To Be Jewish as much as we disagree about everything else.
For those who didn't read it in middle school, The Chosen is, of course, a book about Jews disagreeing; the protagonist is Reuven, the son of a progressive Modern Orthodox rabbi who also wants to be a rabbi even though his dad wants him to be a doctor, who meets his soulmate in Danny, the brilliant but unhappy son of a Hasidic leader, who wants to be a psychiatrist even though he's destined to succeed his father as rabbi. I don't use the word 'soulmate' lightly, btw. Reuven and Danny are SO INTENSE about each other -- they meet-dramatic during a baseball game where they are instantly overcome with passionate murderous intent towards each other, and then on their second meeting (in the hospital!) they exchange apologies and become immediately and mutually obsessed. At one point someone also calls them David and Jonathan so I do think Potok had at least an idea of what he was doing here.
If you note the little 'yikes' in this screencap I have shared, btw, that's not me; that's my friend George, the school child who previously owned the copy of The Chosen that I found in a used bookstore and used for this reread. George faithfully annotated the entire book with his impressions -- other favorites include 'meanies!', 'fathers are not good in this book'/'fathers actually good', and 'lol everyones killing it' during a particularly intense session of Talmudic scholarship -- and I regret to report that the grade on the front shows that his teacher did not appreciate his efforts as much as she could have. I'm very sorry, George; you extremely enhanced my reading experience and in my heart you got an A.
