Scott: Chaim Potok

I have always loved Jews. From my childhood best friend Jeremy Wickman to my obsession with social commentator Michael Medved, we have always just been kindred spirits, Jews and I. I’m not one to stereotype a whole race of people but I know for a fact that every Jew on earth is smart, introspective, and somewhat of a misfit. Those qualities remind me of me.

So today I would like to add one more Jew to my kindred spirits list: Rabbi and fictionist Chaim Potok.
Last week I finished his novel The Chosen and was so taken by it I started reading its sequel, The Promise, yesterday and I’m almost done.

A brief list of the themes Potok tackles in these books is enough to make one’s spine tingle with curiosity. His characters delve into the history of Judaism, Freudian psychology, what it meant to be a Secularist and Orthodox Jew during World War II, friendship, parenthood, childhood, becoming a man, the learning process, the role of current events in one’s life, family legacy, honor, pain, atonement, and love (of the romantic variety). That’s a lot of material to be covered in just two books but Potok’s characters are as deep as the Jewish people and therefore deal with these issues in a quite natural way that sheds light on all without coming to trite conclusions about any.

Notably absent from this list of themes is God. While it is assumed that the motive behind the extremely pious practices of all the characters is a belief in God, the characters seem to have no personal relationship with Him. Indeed the only mentions of God in the books focus on His dealings with the Jewish people as a whole; a force that is merely present and accepted but never explored.

For me perhaps the most delicious quality of Potok’s writing is his excellent use of figurative language, all of which adds to the believability of the characters. I think the mark of a talented writer is one who can express thoughts and feelings shared by the whole human race in a way which helps us to better understand ourselves.

For example: when the actions of a certain female character casts suspicion on her affection towards our main character, his jealousy is summed up in one sentence that says it all “But I understood, and the understanding was edged with an emotion I had no right to feel but felt anyway.” As someone who has suffered from the green monster of jealousy, that sentence made my gut wrench and in that moment I knew exactly how Reuven Malter felt.

Months after key events in the plot take place, Reuven is trying to make sense of how things are unfolding, or not unfolding…

“All during those last weeks of August it had seemed as if the separate lines of our lives were being manipulated somehow, purposefully and carefully brought together by some master weaver. Now it seemed the weaver had wearied of his game. The lines hung free. So the summer turned slowly into the mist and smoke of autumn.”

It’s these kinds of observations that we all make, but Potok expresses in a way that gives meaning to the meaningless. His prose is no more decorative than the natural flow of human thought.

I cried at the end of the first book. We’ll see tonight if I cry at the end of the second.