Shame on us - going on and on about R.A.Lafferty and not one word that I could find about Chaim Potok, who died last Tuesday, July 23.
His novels were moving and evocative portraits of gifted and often precocious children growing up. In The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev, Davita's Harp and several others, he chronicles their struggle to reconcile their strict upbringing with the more permissive but sometimes oppressing realities of modern society. At the same time the same drama unfolds in microcosm as they painfully grow away from their parents and their expectations.
On the lecture circuit he described the phenomenon as a "core-core culture confrontation." Most of his stories were about Orthodox Jews, but he recognized that the quandary is one faced by any culture with firm and deeply-held beliefs...
I've not read anything of his, wofa. They certainly sound potent. Are they depressing?
No Jackie, not at all.. I love the world they opened up for me. My neighborhood was 30% Italian, 30% Irish, and 30% Jewish, and and a small mixture of 'others', in my "grade class" of 80 students, one french canadian, one pole, one dutch, one hispanic, 2 germans round out the large mass of Irish and italian.--in the neighborhood, there were very few non-catholics, aside from the jews, and about half that i knew, were irish protestants. I tended to see the Jews as a single group, even though there were 4 synagogs in walking distance (and there were 7 catholic church's, each offering 4 of 5 sunday masses! and only two other christian churches)
by HS age, in public HS, i learned that what i saw as monolythic group, Jews, were divided into gradiations from non-religious, to reformed, on to conservative (most of the very religous jews use private/parochial schools, not public schools.) In senior year, i read the The Chosen, and for the first time, learned about the detail that Jews themselves perceived.
I had long been aware that italian catholics, and parishes had a different focus, and some different traditions, (my parish was most definately an Irish parish) and i was too, aware of differences in protestant faiths, (this was help enormously by public school, catholic parochial schools still taught about Luther, as if he was lucifer!)
But i had not been aware of the sublties of Jewish life. There are many commanalities, (just as christian faith share the belief in jesus, and the gospels of the new testiment-- but religous practices of anglicans are very different than those of baptist, and both are different in some ways from methodist.)
From the non religious jews (who still, out of ingrained habit, and family culture, often practice jews customs, even if they don't hold with all of the fine points of kashrot) to observant, to reformed, to conservative, to hasidic, there are shade of differences, and the same pettiness that often distingishes different sect of christianity, i think now of Garrison Keiler, and his fun, loving stories of the Lutherians, and how they held themselves to be slightly above all the others)were all in there, with each family having a standard of religous practice, some where on the continuum, the most religous, hold themselves as guardian, the most non observant, as the most modern. but modern is such an poor word.
many very religous jews love modern convienences.. timers on coffee machines and ovens were a boon-- since a religous jew will not 'light' a match (and in modern term this is extended to 'turning on a light', and by extention, turning on any electrical appliance, a Mr Coffee machine that can be set up hours before, that will automatically shut its self off, is a boon!)-- so modern touches mingle freely with a lifestyle that still follows food laws devised to help control food poisoning in the deserts of the mid east, 4 to 5 thousand years ago!
early on, in The Chosen, there is minor baseball accident, involving a conserative boy, on one team, and a very religous boy, a hasidim, on another.. it serves to bond the two in friendship.
the conservative boy, an older son, is quite brillient, and it is presumed he will follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, and become a rabbi (a word that means teacher), but he desires to be a doctor. the demands of college and medical school present what could be conflicts.. as does his desire to be a doctor.
Jewish law, (and others religous law, catholism for one) holds that to save one live, is equal to saving the world (and the converse, to kill one person is as moral reprehensible as if you have killed everyone.. each life is so valuable). Because of this, the boy's desire to persue medicine is seen as a noble, and one of the few acceptable alternatives to following his father as rabbi.
the book is set in 1950's/1960 brooklyn, and a good knowledge of baseball is required, (and some knowledge of stick ball, the city varient of baseball, helps)
Evan as person who grew up in NY, with jews as neighbors and friends, i found the books opened up to me a new world.. friends existed in school and in parks, but now i was invited into the kitchen, in effect, and lived with the family, and learned the reasons behind some of the stuff i knew, and learned some of the philosophy of judism.
My parents were pretty religous, and we keep "sunday" as sabbeth, you did petty work, like making the bed and doing dishes, but large work, like laundry, or vacuuming was out.. but orthodox jews, not only don't work, they specifcally have designed the sabbeth to be hard, in some ways to observe, and in others easy... being invited into a household, that has very strict rules about what can and can't be done, and learning the rules don't make it hard, but rather make life joyful, is one of the things Potok's books did. (but i read all most all of them, i loved The Chosen so much! )
wow, that a lot! I think you would enjoy the books, because i think you enjoy learning about how some cultures nurture successful family life, and that is one aspect of these books. there are some conflict (what good story doesn't have conflict?) and as i say, an accident, in the beginning, but the are not violent or depressing..
Thank you, wofa. I somehow missed the news of Potok's death, but I, too, was introduced to his work by The Chosen and moved on to some of the others, although not all. Have you read Old Men at Midnight? It's actually 3 novellas that talk about the horrors of war. The 3 are tied together by Ilana Davita Dinn, who hears the war stories from 3 men at different stages of her life. I enjoyed it, but found the third story somewhat confusing and haven't yet had time to re-read it to figure out what I missed. In any case, if you haven't yet read it, it's worth a look.
nk