Resolving Conflicting Cultures in Potok's The Chosen

Abstract

The Chosen focuses on its two main characters, Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, and covers their high school and college years, the period in their lives when they struggle for self realization. Both are sons of religious fathers, but while Reuven is orthodox and secularized. Danny's father is the head of an ultraorthodox and mystical sect of Jews called Hasids. Rabbi Isaac Saunders, Danny's father, fully expects Danny to inherit his role as the spiritual leader of his congregation, but Danny is more interested in modern psychology. Reuven's father, David Malter, is a Hebrew scholar. The dissertation has argued that the predicament of Danny Saunders lies at the core of Potok's The Chosen: Should Danny remain in the very ethnic world of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews, or should he reach out to join mainstream American Culture? In this regard Danny's predicament which symbolizes the concern of many Jews in the United States constitutes the conflict in the novel. What the proposed dissertation reveals is that in the Potok's The Chosen, the conflict functions at several levels. These are: the generational conflict, cultural conflict, ideological conflict, the split between two vision of God and man's relationship to him. The conflicts are, however, resolved in favor of liberalism and multiculturalism.