- Mass Market Paperback
- Publisher: Fawcett Books (1 Dec 1982)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0449203344
- ISBN-13: 978-0449203347
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.4 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,477,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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First Sentence
FOR THE FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other's existence. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
FOR THE FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other's existence. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this tale of two New York Jewish boys growing up in the 40s, Chaim Potok weaves a whole analysis of the path of Judaism in the 20th Century.
The first chapter describes a schoolboy baseball game, which is disarmingly gripping. (I've rarely been more eager to find out who won.) It quickly moves on to deeper things, though, as the game sets the protagonist, Reuven, off on a journey as he gets to befriend a Hasidic contemporary of his: he has to try to understand an even stricter interpretation of Judaism than his own.
Potok does not just tell a beautiful story. He also manages to get the reader to empathise with something as potentially alienating as Hasidism. As a Christian, I for one feel as if I now understand my Jewish friends a little better, both those who choose to follow their faith strictly and those who prefer a more liberal approach. The chapters in which the boys tussle with the Talmud are brilliantly vivid and really make one feel something of what it is like to give oneself over to this sacred text.
Being set in the 1940s, he also has much to say about the creation of the state of Israel and why that hit home so sharply in New York then.
This era is as beautifully recreated as the friendship between Reuven and Danny. Fascinatingly, women hardly feature in this book. The key relationships are between the boys and their fathers, and their relationship with each other: a kind of minor David and Jonathan.
A lovely, vivid, enlightening read.
The first chapter describes a schoolboy baseball game, which is disarmingly gripping. (I've rarely been more eager to find out who won.) It quickly moves on to deeper things, though, as the game sets the protagonist, Reuven, off on a journey as he gets to befriend a Hasidic contemporary of his: he has to try to understand an even stricter interpretation of Judaism than his own.
Potok does not just tell a beautiful story. He also manages to get the reader to empathise with something as potentially alienating as Hasidism. As a Christian, I for one feel as if I now understand my Jewish friends a little better, both those who choose to follow their faith strictly and those who prefer a more liberal approach. The chapters in which the boys tussle with the Talmud are brilliantly vivid and really make one feel something of what it is like to give oneself over to this sacred text.
Being set in the 1940s, he also has much to say about the creation of the state of Israel and why that hit home so sharply in New York then.
This era is as beautifully recreated as the friendship between Reuven and Danny. Fascinatingly, women hardly feature in this book. The key relationships are between the boys and their fathers, and their relationship with each other: a kind of minor David and Jonathan.
A lovely, vivid, enlightening read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A book group including both Jews and Christians discussed this lyrical book this autumn.
The title indicates the main theme: are we chosen or are we able to make choices? Being chosen has both positive and negative consequences; unpleasant obligations and rewarding privileges.
The novel is set between the final years of World War II and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It tells the story of two Jewish teenage boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Reuven Malter is the son of a Talmudic scholar and Danny Saunders is the son of a hassidic rebbe, destined to succeed his father. Reuven's father says that a mind like Danny's is seen only once in a generation. Yet, despite his destiny as a tzadik, Danny wants to roam free, to explore everything there is to learn in the world, yet he believes that he carries the burden of his people on his shoulders.
These are not typical teenagers. They're not into girlfriends, movies, music or cars. They experience very little from outside their tight-knit family, school, and religious life and are devoted to studies, their religion, their fathers, and traditional values. There is also an absence of women in the book.
Sight and insight is a key theme: Reuven's eye is damaged by Danny in a baseball match. How do we pursue truth in a grey world? The early vision problems foreshadow the horrific vision that will occur later when the atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The unimaginable takes place and scorches the characters' visions forever. The end of the war sees new information. What once remained partially hidden, the details of the Shoah, comes to public view, intensifying the vision changes the characters undergo.
Another theme is silence. Danny's father never talks to him except when they are studying Torah and Talmud. There are numerous instances where both Danny and Reuven both receive and process information non-verbally: long pauses in conversation are found throughout the novel. Silence is also an important aspect of Potok's writing style. He uses words sparingly and characters often sit quietly, immersed in their own thoughts.
One of the major conflicts in the novel is between Reb Saunders and David Malter
about the proper way to respond to the Shoah. Should Jews get on with the foun¬ding of the State of Israel or piously wait for the Messiah since 'it will all emerge through holiness'. 'God will build the land, not Ben Gurion and his goyim! When the Messiah comes, we will have Eretz Yisrael.
We enjoyed this novel which gave us much to discuss and argue about.
The title indicates the main theme: are we chosen or are we able to make choices? Being chosen has both positive and negative consequences; unpleasant obligations and rewarding privileges.
The novel is set between the final years of World War II and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. It tells the story of two Jewish teenage boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Reuven Malter is the son of a Talmudic scholar and Danny Saunders is the son of a hassidic rebbe, destined to succeed his father. Reuven's father says that a mind like Danny's is seen only once in a generation. Yet, despite his destiny as a tzadik, Danny wants to roam free, to explore everything there is to learn in the world, yet he believes that he carries the burden of his people on his shoulders.
These are not typical teenagers. They're not into girlfriends, movies, music or cars. They experience very little from outside their tight-knit family, school, and religious life and are devoted to studies, their religion, their fathers, and traditional values. There is also an absence of women in the book.
Sight and insight is a key theme: Reuven's eye is damaged by Danny in a baseball match. How do we pursue truth in a grey world? The early vision problems foreshadow the horrific vision that will occur later when the atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The unimaginable takes place and scorches the characters' visions forever. The end of the war sees new information. What once remained partially hidden, the details of the Shoah, comes to public view, intensifying the vision changes the characters undergo.
Another theme is silence. Danny's father never talks to him except when they are studying Torah and Talmud. There are numerous instances where both Danny and Reuven both receive and process information non-verbally: long pauses in conversation are found throughout the novel. Silence is also an important aspect of Potok's writing style. He uses words sparingly and characters often sit quietly, immersed in their own thoughts.
One of the major conflicts in the novel is between Reb Saunders and David Malter
about the proper way to respond to the Shoah. Should Jews get on with the foun¬ding of the State of Israel or piously wait for the Messiah since 'it will all emerge through holiness'. 'God will build the land, not Ben Gurion and his goyim! When the Messiah comes, we will have Eretz Yisrael.
We enjoyed this novel which gave us much to discuss and argue about.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Two young people emboding the two opposite polar instances of judaism meet in Brooklyn during the second world war in the course of a baseball game that soon turns into an holy battle.
Reuven, the son of a talmudic scholar, is perceived by Danny, a radical chassidim, as an apicoros, an heretic that dares profaning the holy language by letting himself being schooled in hebrew rather than in yiddish.
The wound that Danny inflicts upon Reuven in the game is a symbolic mutilation, the sign of the tension between moderation and radicalism, the distancing culture of doubt and the deeply involving practise of mystical belief.
The book traces a tale of an exchange of identities, whereby the two characters embark in a dense intellectual and emotional friendship that finally enables them to exchange their personalities: Reuven's scholarship turns from science to a rabbinic drive. Whereas Danny, the rabbi to be, chooses, as a final challange to his previously received mysticism, to further his interest for freudian theories with a secular college education.
Potok's narrative operates,rather than true words, via successive waves of silence. The culture of silence enforced by one of the fathers promts the characters (and with them the community of readers) to dig inside themselves in search of their sometimes submerged humanity. Silence, the tension of the countless silent pauses, links biologically fathers and sons to the extent that, in spite of the dogmatism of their surrounding enviroments, the two characters carve up a space to listen to their own true vocation.
Chaim's work stands out also as an appraisal of scholarhsip, of the fine quality of the character's skills in focusing on the quality,rather than the quantity, of their knowledge and read a line one thousand times so that, through an aleph, through a single letter or a combination of chabbalistic devices, we may see the universe.
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