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Literary Review
ENDPAPER
Incomparably compassionate
PRADEEP SEBASTIAN
THE death of Chaim Potok — the much-loved author of The Chosen, My Name Is Asher Lev and The Book of Lights — a few years ago went sadly unmentioned in the Indian press. There were no obituaries or articles on him. This was probably because he was never taken as seriously as the other Jewish-American writers like Bellow, Malamud and Roth. He was considered a middlebrow writer. And the critics were right: he was not a complex literary writer who wrote stylish prose but a storyteller. A rich, one-of-a-kind storyteller embraced by readers more than critics. All through school and college he was my favourite writer. Finishing The Chosen one day in high school, I told myself: "Here is the writer I have been looking for." What was unique about him was this: he wrote about the passion and beauty of religious faith — a rare theme in contemporary fiction. His characters were unusual in modern literature: gifted young intellectuals with a passion for religion and learning who are incomparably compassionate. To find another set of characters possessing such goodness and tenderness you would have to turn to To Kill a Mockingbird. One of Potok's themes is the tightrope balance his characters will have to make between what their religion requires of them and what they require from the world.
His books are set in the fascinating, esoteric world of the Hasidic community in New York — an Orthodox Jewish sect with mystical roots. His characters — mostly young people — struggle to resolve the conflict between their own genius, their own calling, and the tug of tradition and community. Danny Saunders in The Chosen has to choose between fulfilling his inherited role as tzaddik, a holy leader, to his people and his passion to become a secular psychologist; Asher Lev has to choose between fulfilling his artistic calling and his loyalty to his community; Gershon Loran in The Book of Lights has to choose between his secret passion to become a scholar of the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical text, and becoming an ordained rabbi. Potok went against the grain of contemporary literature in making his conflict not between good versus evil but between "good versus good".
Chaim Potok was born on February 17, 1929 in the Bronx, New York. He grew up in a fundamentalist Orthodox Hasidic community and experienced these conflicts himself. As a young man he was torn between his vocation as a writer and his commitment to serve his community as a rabbi. He chose writing and was forced to break from his community. Ever since, he has been haunted by this conflict. And writing about it has been his way of working out his struggle. He calls this crisis "being suspended in a theological void". In this sense, his characters have really been variations of him — whether it is Reuven Malter or Illana Davita Chandal. It is difficult to describe in words the experience of reading The Chosen. Because it is at once about so many things: the communion of friendship, the love between parents and children, the anguish and the rewards of raising children in religious wisdom, the joy of worship and the excitement of learning. Since its publication in 1967, it has been read and re-read by fans all over the world. It is currently in its 68th paperback printing and it looks like it will never be out of print. Potok wrote it in Jerusalem when he was working on his doctorate. In the mornings he would work on the novel, in the afternoon he would turn to his dissertation. The core of the book is about how two Jewish fathers — one liberal, one orthodox — raise their two very gifted sons. They use religious scholarship and wisdom — Talmudic and mystical — to bring up their children. The ending, where Reb Saunders finally reveals to Reuven why he was compelled to raise Danny, his son, in silence, is one of the most moving and illuminating moments in contemporary fiction.
It's sequel, The Promise (1969) continues the story of Reuven and Danny, who are now grown up. The two most fascinating characters here are Rav Kalmann, an ultra-orthodox Talmud scholar and Abraham Gordon, a liberal Talmud scholar. Potok makes them opponents in their fight for a meaningful Judaism. Reuven is caught between them — he is attracted to both of them but cannot choose because neither worldviews have the answers he is looking for. Once again, The Promise is about finding the balance: this time between an orthodox faith that is too fundamental and a liberal faith that goes too far. Some of the most exciting and astonishing bits from The Chosen and The Promise are the classroom scenes with students and teachers passionately engaged in Talmudic disputation. My Name is Asher Lev (1972) is perhaps his most admired novel; even the critics think this one goes beyond a good story to qualify as literature. The story it has to tell is, once again, unique: Asher Lev, a child prodigy painter, is born to Hasidic parents. That means painting is forbidden to him. But painting is his genius, his life. Asher has to choose between his art and his community. His father thinks art a frivolity, a waste of time. His gentle mother understands but is torn between her son and her husband.
My Name Is Asher Lev is intense, poetic, wrenching. It contains some of the most accurate descriptions of how an artist works. Asher describes the way in which his perception of the world around him begins to take on increasing visual depth: "It was a steady rain and it fell with soft sounds against the stone and street. After a while, I watched from inside the rain and no longer knew I was watching... The asphalt glittered darkly in the rain. The rain cut through the circles of light around the tops of the lamp posts, cold silvery diagonals against the warm yellow-white arcs of brightness. The street seemed to be crying". The Book of Lights (1981) is Potok's most accomplished novel — complex, subtle, resonant. Steeped in the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah and full of moral decisions fraught with anguish. He wrote several novels, plays, children's books and a best-selling work of non-fiction: Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews. His last book was Old Men at Midnight published in 2001. He died on July 24, 2002. He was 73. Potok will always be embraced by Indian readers because of how closely we identify with his characters and their struggles: how to remain faithful to tradition and community and fulfill our vocation, our genius. pradeepsebastian@hotmail.com
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