New Spectacles: Chaim Potok's "The Chosen"

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 I was lucky enough to receive a gift card to Barnes and Noble this summer, and I finally spent it this week. By the way, walking into a bookstore is always a wonderful thing, but it's especially wonderful when you're spending someone else's money.

I had decided to pick up some books that I needed to read or had not read in a very long time and didn't own. I spent an agonizing hour and a half making my selections (for I had more books than money in my hands) and ended up with an odd assortment of books, two were favorites I wanted to personally own, and then a third which I had never read.

The first two were "Quiet" by Susan Cain (and if you have not read it, be you introvert or extrovert, I highly recommend it. In fact, stop what you're doing and go get a copy. Now, immediately. What are you still doing here???), and the second was Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" which I had just read this spring and immediately loved (I loved it so much that I wrote Chabon a thank-you letter, to which he responded. It's here on my desk where I can look at it every day).

The third was Chaim Potok's "The Chosen." It's one of those classic books that I, an English major and masters, missed completely. I have many friends who love Potok, and whenever I feel out of a loop I like to get back in.

What drew me was the premise--two young Jewish boys from different sects of Judaism--Danny is Hasidic, Reuven comes from an intellectual and liberal father-- who form an unlikely friendship. 

Boom. I was already hooked.

But why? Why was a I hooked? Why does this kind of theme pull on me?

It's what pulled on me in "Kavalier and Clay"--this struggle with Jewish identity, this commitment to traditions and ways of life that are constantly under attack and persecution,, the struggle to reconcile with the world as it is and the way they believe God ordains/directs/prescribes it to be. 

The art that comes out of this tension is glorious. It's gritty in the sense that it goes toe-to-toe with Jewish worldviews and secular ones as well as Jewish and Christian. It's an honest grappling, and a grappling that says these things are worth considering, contemplating, arguing, and fighting over.

Sometimes I think in Western Christianity we're so focused on the sweet by-and-by that the here and now gets overlooked, resulting in shoddy art and cheap worship service.

I'm only half-way through "The Chosen" but already I'm savoring the implications of not only the friendship of the two boys, but the tension between the worldviews. It's honestly not so different than the implications, the tensions that Western Christians supposedly face, but again, sometimes I feel like contemporary Christian writings focus so greatly on the hereafter than the importance of relationships and worldviews are somehow neglected.

And this is, I think a fundamental difference between Christian literature and Jewish (and please forgive any gross over-generalizations, I'm learning a lot, so feel free to correct me and add to this, if I am wrong). Christianity is more often preoccupied with the great consummation, the conclusion and completion of all things. Jewish literature comes from a faith that is still looking for the Messiah, still looking for a Promise to be fulfilled. So, while they are waiting, they concern themselves more with the now--exhuming the earth rather than acting as if God Himself will do everything and we have no responsibilities (again, which can often be said of our Western Christian worldview--not always, but often).

I'll stop there before digging myself further into a hole-after all, I have not yet finished the book. But these are just some reflections on why I am finding Jewish literature so good for my soul. It broadens my perspective, and causes me to consider my own faith in a new light. Another good pair of spectacles to see through.