L ifestyles /C ulture
‘The Chosen’ Themes Endure 50 Years Later
JED WEISBERGER | JE STAFF
RENA POTOK BELIEVES
she has inherited her famous
father’s literary traits, including
ability with the written word,
analysis and character empathy.

The daughter of Chaim
Potok, a resident of Merion for
much of his life, who became
one of America’s most-loved
Jewish writers prior to his 2002
death at 72 from brain cancer,
had many enjoyable sessions
with her dad.

“My father audited some of
my classes when I was going
for my doctorate and it was like
having another teacher,” Potok
said. “At the Shabbat dinner
table, instead of discussing
Talmud, we’d discuss my dis-
sertations. It was fun.”
The Chosen was Chaim
Potok’s most-acclaimed novel,
selling 3.4 million copies and
being translated into several
languages. It was made into a
movie directed by Jeremy Kagan
in 1981 and developed into a play
by Aaron Posner in 1999.

And it will be the centerpiece
of a Gershman Philadelphia
Jewish Film Festival program
at 6 p.m. on Feb. 17, at the
National Museum of American
Jewish History.

The play ran for a month
in 1999 at the Arden Theatre
in Philadelphia. It also ran at
the City Theatre in Pittsburgh
and won the 1999 Barrymore
Award for best new play.

“Aaron really helped my
father with all aspects of the
play,” said Potok, an adjunct pro-
fessor at Villanova University.

“He was fortunate to work with
some good people.”
The 1981 film, featuring
Maximilian Schell as Professor
David Malter, Rod Steiger as
Rebbe Issac Saunders, Robby
Benson as Danny Saunders
and Barry Miller as Reuven
Malter, will be shown. Potok
will answer questions from the
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM audience and talk
about a new book,
The Collected Plays
of Chaim Potok,
which she edited
and contributed
an introduction.

Kagan will be
available for ques-
tions via Skype.

“The Chosen
really typifies my
Rena Potok
Photo provided
father’s theme in
a lot of his works
of core-to-core culture con- the messiah can
frontation,’’ Potok said. “He give the Jews a
grew up in a strict Orthodox homeland, while
house with his parents not the
modern wanting him to read books by Orthodox are
non-Jewish authors.

thrilled with the
“He felt some of that grow- aspect of a Jewish
ing up. With The Chosen, first homeland.

there was the novel, then the
The core-to-
movie, then the play and, as core clash also
one would expect, the adap- occurs individu-
tations are a bit different per ally with Danny
areas of art. But the core-to- and
Reuven, core confrontation — tradition with Reuven’s wanting to
versus modernity — theme is date Danny’s sister, Shaindel
present throughout.”
Saunders, and being told he
The plot of The Chosen, set can’t because she already
in Brooklyn from 1944-50, has an arranged marriage.

features two Jewish teenage Meanwhile, Reuven, who aims
boys. The Chasidic Danny is to be a rabbi, takes Danny to
expected to succeed his father his first-ever movie. A newsreel
as rebbe of the Saunders’ comes on showing the Nazi
small sect, and the modern
Orthodox Reuven is the son of
a liberal college professor and
ardent Zionist.

The film spotlights the
differences in the way the
Chasidic group looks at world
and Judaism with how the
modern Orthodox view the
same matters. The boys origi-
nally meet in a baseball game
in which Danny hits a line
drive back at Reuven, who was
pitching. The ball breaks his
glasses and injures his eye.

“In that time period, a lot
of things happen,” Potok said.

“The core-to-cure culture clash
is how the two groups want
things to be. After World War
II ends, and the subject of the
creation of Israel comes up,
the Chasidic sect believes only
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JEWISH EXPONENT
and does not talk to him at any
other time.

“Danny is a brilliant kid,
with a photographic mem-
ory,” Potok said. “The rebbe
believes because of that,
Danny will have no feeling or
empathy for people. Teaching
through silence turns out to be
successful, as Danny becomes
a very sympathetic psycholo-
gist in the The Promise, which
my father wrote as a sequel
to The Chosen. So much my
father experienced when he
was young went into these
books. He gave so many their
first understanding of the
Chasidic world.”
The two boys suffer through
a few other rough patches
because of the core-to-core
confrontations between the
Chasidic system of beliefs and
the modern way of thinking
with the same beliefs. After the
two boys begin to attend Hirsch
College, a Jewish University,
Danny decides to transfer to
Columbia University to study
psychology and appears, not in
Chasidic black, but in a mod-
ern suit as the film ends. l
camps, which the Chasidic
contingent had no knowledge
of, and leaves the rebbe and his
followers terrified.

Another feature of the film
is how Danny is treated by his
father. Except when he and the
rebbe are studying Talmud, the jweisberger@jewishexponent.com:
father invokes “The Silence” 215-832-0737
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