Study Guide: The Chosen (A BookCaps Study Guide)

By BookCaps

The perfect companion to Chaim Potok’s "The Chosen," this study guide contains a chapter by chapter analysis of the book, a summary of the plot, and a guide to major characters and themes.

BookCap Study Guides do not contain text from the actual book, and are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Dec 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465836021

BookCaps

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.Visit www.bookcaps.com to see more of our books, or contact us with any questions.

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Chaim Potok’s

The Chosen

By BookCaps Study Guides

© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc.

Published at SmashWords

Historical Context

Chaim Potok is a Jewish-American man who was born Orthodox in 1929 and went on to become a Rabbi, as well as a scholar. He began writing as a teenager and attended Yeshiva University where he received a religious education that led to him being ordained as a Rabbi, and where he also received a PhD in Philosophy.

Potok was always interested in the arts and was an author and a painter for most of his life. He wrote many short stories, essays, and novels in his lifetime, which lasted until 2002. Most of Potok’s writing dealt with merging traditional Jewish values into a modern world and the various events in history that have had an effect on this assimilation. Potok often deals with the idea of assimilation and the struggle for Jewish-Americans to fully assimilate, completely hold on to their Jewish heritage and follow it strictly, or to merge the two ideas together.

In Potok’s first novel, The Chosen, he writes of two boys who are from different areas of Judaism, Hasidic and Orthodox. The boys become best friends but are pulled apart at times because of their father’s differing views of the world and what is happening in it at that time. During Reuven and Danny’s friendship, they witness World War II, the Holocaust, and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, all of which are issues that stand to bring the boys apart.

They attend Hirsch College, which is a literary translation of Potok’s own alma mater, Yeshiva University. The boys are in constant limbo between traditional Judaism, and modernity and their clashes with one another, their families, and society are showcased in Potok’s first novel.

Plot

World War II is coming to an end, and two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn find themselves becoming close friends after a line drive, hit by Danny, during a particularly intense softball game smashes Reuven in the face and nearly blinds him. Danny is Hasidic, and Reuven is Orthodox, which are differing views in the Jewish community and the cause for much tension between the boys’ families over time. Danny is incredible intelligent and has a tremendous thirst for knowledge which Reuven finds impressive.

Reuven notices that Danny and his father have a very interesting relationship with one another and that Reb Saunders, Danny’s father, never speaks directly to him as he is raising him in silence. Despite the differences between the Hasidic and Orthodox communities, all are