Forty-six years ago this week, Chaim Potok published The Promise, a follow-up to his 1967 bestselling novel The Chosen. The Promise picks up where The Chosen left off: Danny Saunders, scion to a Brooklyn chassidic dynasty, is proving his virtuoso talent as a psychologist, the profession he pursues despite objections from his rabbi father. Danny’s best friend, Reuven Malter, is in the final year of rabbinical school and struggling to reconcile the traditional techniques of study imposed by his teachers with the modern methods he finds so compelling. In the end, Reuven manages to win the grudging respect of his instructor, the haunted Rav Kalman, and Danny cures the troubled youngster Michael Gordon, son of famed modernist Talmud scholar Abraham Gordon, and marries Michael’s older cousin, Rachel.
The Chosen and The Promise both emphasize the wide gulf that separated the ultra-Orthodox from other manifestations of Judaism in 1940s New York. In the ensuing decades, not much has changed. For the most part, chassidic and haredi sects remain detached from the greater Jewish community today.
But Potok’s novels suggest it’s possible to bridge the gap, and that there is good reason to attempt to do so. As Reuven and Danny get to know each other, they gain a window into another variety of Judaism, and when their friendship matures, they manage to bring their very different families closer together, too. By the end of The Promise, Abraham Gordon and Reb Saunders, Danny’s father, are celebrating together at the wedding of their children. No one has conceded ideological ground, but it seems everyone has come to respect, even appreciate, each other.
In the wake of a chassidic man’s bloody rampage at Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade, and the arson attack by suspected Jewish terrorists that left two Palestinians, a young boy and his father, dead, Jews around the world are trying to come to grips with the extremist mindset that fuels such heinous crimes.
Potok had his own thoughts on the subject. In a 1983 interview, he argued, “When normal systems no longer work effectively for a religious individual, that individual will resort often enough to the apocalyptic dimension of the religious experience, to the expectation that very quickly the horrors of the world must be resolved, and will be resolved by God… Apocalyptic versions are fall-back systems when the normal systems cease to offer effective answers to the dilemmas of existence.”
And yet, The Chosen and The Promise suggest there can be an alternative scenario. If Reuven and Danny, two boys who might as well have been living on different planets even though they grew up just a few blocks apart, could forge a life-altering friendship, then maybe we can break down our own divisions, too. That is, after all, the best way to fight extremism.
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This week, we kick off coverage of the 2015 federal election. During the run-up to the Oct. 19 vote, CJN news editor Daniel Wolgelerenter will focus on how the election affects the Jewish community in his Campaign Notebook column. In this week’s inaugural edition, he takes a look at intriguing races in four Jewish battleground ridings. — YONI