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The Chosen
Potok’s best-selling debut about two Jewish boys growing up in 1940s Brooklyn, published in 1967, is now considered a classic. Danny is Orthodox, while Reuven is Hasidic. While Reuven recovers from an eye injury courtesy of baseball, he listens to coverage of D-Day on the radio. After the war ends and the horrors of the Holocaust emerge, Danny and Reuven’s fathers have very different ideas about their sons and what role Israel should play in their future. Nominated for the National Book Award, this explores the nuances of religious differences, assimilation in the US, and the gift of friendship.
About the Book
Publisher’s description:
A coming-of-age classic about two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, this “profound and universal” story of what we share across cultures remains deeply pertinent today (The Wall Street Journal).
It’s the spring of 1944 and fifteen-year-olds Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders have lived five blocks apart all their lives. But they’ve never met, not until the day an accident during a softball game sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon these two boys—one expected to become a Hasidic rebbe, the other at ease with secular America—are drawn into one another’s worlds despite one father’s strong opposition.
Set against the backdrop of WWII and the creation of the state of Israel, The Chosen is a poignant novel about transformation and tradition, growing up and growing wise, and finding yourself—even if that might mean leaving your community.
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