Reuven In Chaim Potok's The Chosen

At a competitive baseball game, Danny hits a ball straight into Reuven’s prideful eye, sending him to the hospital. Feeling guilty and confused, Danny visits him and upon his return from the hospital, Reuven reflects on his interaction with Danny: "Somehow everything had changed. […] I felt I had crossed into another world, that little pieces of my old self had been left behind on the black asphalt floor of the school yard alongside the shattered lens of my glasses." (Potok 84). In this passage, Reuven describes the effects of his hospital experience: his perception, on all levels, has been broadened and deepened by his accident, by the suffering he witnesses, and by his interaction with Danny.

He is taught to be exactly like his father when he becomes an adult and he is extremely observant. I was raised like Reuven and completely agree with his father’s approach of raising Reuven. I completely disagree with Reb Saunders way of raising Danny because it was essentially a “radical” way of

Throughout Chapter Nine of The Chosen, Chaim Potok demonstrates Reuven’s growth as a character, utilizes symbolism to show the struggles Reuven went through, and reveals how important it is to appreciate things you may take for granted, or even hate, such as Reuven’s exams. Potok exhibits Reuven’s growth as a character using the phone call with Billy’s father. On the call, he learns that Billy’s surgery was not successful, which shook him almost enough to make him drop the phone. This exposes how close he grew to Billy in his short stint in the hospital with him. We as people tend to form greater bonds with others when we go through highs and lows together, as Reuven and Billy did.

“I saw it coming at me, and there was nothing I could do. It hit the finger section of my glove, deflected off, smashed into the upper rim of the left lens of my glasses, glanced off my forehead, and knocked me down” (33). In this incident from Chaim Potok’s novel The Chosen, Reuven Malter receives a smack in the face from a ball during a baseball game. Afterward, he undergoes surgery on his eye and spends a week in the hospital. This turning point in his life and the events that follow fully reveal Reuven’s character to the reader.

Reuven found a new appreciation of his health since he could have gone blind. Another example of perception change from the novel is when Reuven realizes Danny isn't how he appeared to be. During the story, Mr. Malter says “Things are always as they seem to be, Reuven?”. He says this because Reuven told him that it seemed like Danny hit him deliberately.

In Chaim Potok’s novel, The Chosen, Reb Saunders, who is Danny’s father, is a very interesting and wise man. His techniques and beliefs for raising his son is strange and unorthodox but it is what he believes will help grow his son’s soul. He is not your typical father and being Jewish plays a role in his decisions. In the book we see how his actions are used and end with fruitful results. Reb Saunders grew up in a “small town in southern Russia” and was raised in the Jewish Orthodox customs.

Characters exemplify great depth and dimensions through the course of their actions and choices. In the novel, The Chosen, Chaim Potok exhibits crucial messages and significant teachings through the intimate friendship between two boys from similar, yet different worlds. He utilizes David Malter, Reuven’s father, as a mentor who provides reasoning and patience. David Malter delivers sincere characteristics to portray his morals and virtues. David Malter’s judgments allow him to observe and rationalize situations.

Being very stubborn is something that I try often not to do. When somebody tells me something trying to change my attitude toward something I try to listen to what their saying and not allow myself to have quick judgment about it. I don’t want to stick to what I believe even if I strongly believe in it, I would rather like to hear different aspects to a situation. I have been in situations before where someone did not want to listen to what I was saying even though I had good arguements on the topic. Many people who are very stubborn get defensive if a person argues what they believe.

In “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok uses the relationship between Danny and Reuven to show the social and political problems that they dealt with. Reuven didn’t fully understand the Hasidic view on things; he asked his dad, Mr. Malter, many questions, that of which his dad knew most or just gave his opinions. Reuven was drug into Danny’s father, Reb Saunders’s, synagogue multiple times, where he learned more about the Talmud and the history behind the Hasidic religion. Reb Saunders’s was considered a tzaddik, by which everyone looked upon him as a god, but a tzaddik is just a pious leader that is a messenger between God and man. Also, with Reb Saunders being a tzaddik, he will have to pass down the role to his son, Danny.

Instead of selfishly wanting to experience all of the world that he can, the Reb is content to make an impact on the lives of those he encounters while he is still here. For example, Mitch may have just forgotten about his old rabbi and his faith if the Reb had not asked Mitch to do his eulogy. The Reb decided to invest in Mitch and trust him to carry on his memory, especially by doing his eulogy. He must have had a lot of faith in Mitch to trust him in this way. This could have also been the Reb’s way of “touching everything”; he takes chances on people whenever her can in hopes of them remembering him and his

Genuine friendships are excellent things to have. It’s nice to have somebody to confide in when you don’t know where to turn. In The Chosen, Reuven states that he “didn’t mean to offend you [Danny] or anything, I just want to be honest.’ ‘I want you to be honest’ Danny said.” (Page 119)

To choose or to be chosen; which is better? The gift of choice is something not bestowed upon everyone, and this is especially true for the main character of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. The novel describes the life of two boys, Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, one of which has been granted the freedom to choose his own destiny, and the other has already had his life mapped out since the day of his birth. Throughout his childhood and much of his adolescence, Danny struggled between the life he wants and the one chosen for him by his father, Reb Saunders, the rabbi a Hasidic congregation. As the eldest son of his family, Danny has been born into the position of the future rabbi of his temple, however, he yearns for something much different.

Due to the fact that Reuven and his dad have frequent conversation, they have a much closer relationship and Reuven loves and admires his father very much. Danny is showing Reuven his house, “Danny took me to the third floor rooms. They were identical with the ones in which my father and I lived” (161). Because they grew up in the same neighborhood, the places where their families lived are basically the same. While they may have their differences, because Reuven and Danny grew up in the same area, family living dynamics are very

When they meet at the baseball field they judge each other based on rumors they have heard or by the actions of the team. Reuven thinks of them as the “whole snooty bunch of Hasidim” (Chosen 62). Reuven thought Danny was a malicious person because he knew that Danny purposely tried to hit him. But later when Reuven opened up to Danny and stopped being so judgmental, Reuven realized that Danny was kind and just needed a friend. When Reuven is hit with the baseball, there is a chance he might be blind.

In his book The Promise Chaim Potok leads the reader on a heartbreaking journey full of spiritual conflict and decision. As a sequel to The Chosen, The Promise picks up with Reuven Malter, the main character and a Jewish man now in his mid-twenties, attending Hirsch University, a Jewish seminary in Brooklyn, New York. Reuven keeps his friendship with Danny Saunders, whom he met on a baseball field during his teenage years and later went to college with, even though they now go their separate ways as Reuven becomes a rabbi, and Danny practices psychology. During the summer Reuven dates Rachel Gordon, the niece of Abraham Gordon, a man excommunicated from the Jewish society, and meets Abraham’s son, Michael, a stubborn teen with a mental issue. Also, over the same summer Reuven’s father, David Malter, wrote a controversial book about the Talmud.