Line #5 Literature/TheChosen


1	[[quoteright:232:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thechosen_8110.jpg]]
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3	A 1967 coming of age story by Chaim Potok set in late-forties New York.
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5	The story features a friendship between two Jewish boys from different sects. One is Danny Saunders, the heir to the Rabbinate of an Ultra Orthodox congregation of Russian immigrants. The other is Reuven Malter, who is from a more moderate and Americanized but still religious family. His father is a noted intellectual and Zionist activist. Danny is being subjected to a curious form of training called "raising in silence" which entails being shunned by one's own father, an attempt to teach him "what it is to suffer" to prepare him to be a Rebbe (kind of like a Rabbi but with more mystic and authoritative, almost priestly connotations). Reuven befriends him in his loneliness and they share the struggles of faith and the normal difficulties of teens as well as the rivalry between their two factions. This book deals with themes like the struggle between family loyalty and friendship and the difficulties of faith amid modernity. It gives many insights into Jewish culture and is popular among Gentiles as well as Jews.
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7	Potok later wrote a sequel called ''The Promise''. Not to be confused with the first book of ''Literature/TheStoneDanceOfTheChameleon'', which has the exact same title.
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10	!!Tropes Include:
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12	* AFriendInNeed: Reuven befriends Danny in his loneliness. This, of course, forces him to accept the fate of being an IronWoobie.
13	* UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict: As seen from New York.
14	* ArtisticLicenseHistory: The main characters start out in high school and go on to college while historical events are mentioned as occurring, including D-Day, the end of World War II, and the creation of the State of Israel. Somehow, though, the year 1946 gets skipped along the way.
15	* ArrangedMarriage: Both Danny and his sister are already promised to future spouses. His sister goes through with the marriage, but Danny doesn't.
16	* BerserkButton: The idea of a secular Jewish state to Reb Saunders.
17	* TheChainsOfCommanding: Very much on Rebbe Saunders' mind, and also on Danny's - he is the heir and is never allowed to forget it.
18	* CharacterOverlap: With ''Davita's Harp'', also by Chaim Potok. Most of the book deals with the main character, Ilana Davita, discovering and embracing her Jewish heritage, and in the last few chapters of the book it is revealed that she attends the same yeshiva as Reuven, and they compete for an academic prize.
19	* CultureClash
20	* TheDutifulSon: Danny. [[spoiler:Though in the end he takes a different path from what was intended]].
21	** His loyalty to his father, though, makes him accept the fate of being an IronWoobie without rebelling.
22	* DysfunctionalFamily: Arguably the Saunders - see previous entry on TheChainsOfCommanding.
23	* EyeScream:
24	** Reuven is hit in the face with a baseball and gets a shard of glass in his eye. While Reuven ultimately makes a full recovery, it's clear that his father is traumatized by this and worries no end during the early stages before it becomes evident that Reuven's vision will not be harmed.
25	** While in the hospital, he is next to a man named Tony Savo, who loses an eye to an unspecified (boxing?) injury.
26	* FightingForAHomeland: The pro-Zionist position on the State of Israel, ''especially'' once the horrors of the Holocaust come to light.
27	* TheFilmOfTheBook: A film was made in 1981.
28	* FireForgedFriends: Danny and Reuven meet at an unusually intense baseball game.
29	* FriendlyEnemies: David Malter and Reb Saunders. For Malter's part, he has an immense amount of respect for Reb Saunders, and Reb Saunders acknowledges that Malter is [[InsistentTerminology "an observer of the Commandments"]]. Their dispute is purely political, and once the State of Israel is declared, it's pretty much over.
30	* GoodIsOldFashioned: Danny's people think this
31	* GoodParents: Reuven's father.
32	* GoodShepherd: Rebbe Saunders.
33	* HeterosexualLifePartners: Danny and Reuven, unless you're one of the readers who saw HoYay.
34	* HourglassPlot: While both are religious Jews, Danny is the designated heir to a Hasidic dynasty, whereas Reuven's background is relatively more secular--yet by the end [[spoiler:Danny goes to college to study psychology, whereas Reuven studies to become a rabbi.]]
35	* IJustWantToBeNormal: Not exactly. Danny most certainly does want to be a Jewish [[TheSmartGuy smart guy]], but he doesn't want to be a Rebbe.
36	* InadequateInheritor: Rebbe Saunders is desperate to prevent this.
37	* InformedAttribute: By the time Reuven makes it to college he's allegedly quite popular with girls. We never meet them.
38	* InsufferableGenius: In Rebbe Saunders' words, a "mind without a soul." When he realized how brilliant Danny was, he was desperate to prevent his son from becoming this, and thus becoming unfit to be a Rebbe. (He didn't mind the "genius" part, of course. Just the "insufferable".)
39	* IntelligibleUnintelligible: Danny and his father only communicate through various substitutes like Rabbinical studies or using Reuven as intermediary or simply the vague SilentBob feeling that comes from living together. [[spoiler:At the end of the book, they begin to talk. By ''The Promise'', they're communicating comfortably.]]
40	* {{Irony}}: Reuven eventually ''does'' want to be a Rabbi.
41	%%* JewishAndNerdy:
42	* JewsLoveToArgue: Most of the verbal conflicts in the book are a form of academic jousting around the Talmud -- serious but mostly just a contest of skill. On the topic of the State of Israel, however, the CultureClash is so profound that people stop speaking to one another over it.
43	* JewishMother: Actually a Jewish Father, Rebbe Saunders, but he is VERY demanding.
44	* MagneticHero: Rebbe Saunders. He has a forceful personality. Also the {{Backstory}} tells that when in Russia he led his congregation through a time of chaos and took them to safety in America which shows that he has HiddenDepths of heroic leadership.
45	* MissingMom: Reuven's mother died when he was a toddler.
46	* MySisterIsOffLimits: Subverted. When Reuven shows some interest in Danny's sister, he reacts as if it's this trope -- and then explains that she's already got an ArrangedMarriage lined up.
47	* UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity
48	* OddFriendship
49	* OldMaster: Rebbe Saunders, in a rabbinical sense rather then a martial arts sense but has a similar sort of personality.
50	* OpenMindedParent: Reuven's father. Reuven is luckier in this respect.
51	* TheOutsiderBefriendsTheBest: Reuven is introduced to the insular and hostile Hasidic community in a game against Danny, the heir to a large local rabbinate of which his father is the respected leader. He goes on to become close friends with him and be further immersed in their community.
52	* ThePatriarch: Reb Saunders.
53	* PatrioticFervor: Reuven's father.
54	* [[PreacherMan Rabbi Man]]: Rebbe Saunders.
55	* ReplacementSibling: In the end [[spoiler:Danny's brother became the heir, leaving him to become a therapist]].
56	** Danny and his father both; Danny's father replaced a brilliant older brother who left the fold, and Danny was actually Reb Saunders's second son, the first having been killed at a very young age in a pogrom.
57	* ReluctantRuler: Or reluctant Rebbe; Danny
58	* SevenDeadlySins: Specifically Pride. The reason for the raising in silence is that [[spoiler:Rebbe Saunders is afraid that Danny's intellectual prowess will make him disdain others the way his brother once had. This is successfully prevented, and Danny becomes "a righteous man"]].
59	* TheSmartGuy: Practically everyone, but especially Danny.
60	* SoProudOfYou: [[spoiler:Rebbe Saunders tells Danny this because, even if he won't be a Rebbe, he has proven to be a righteous man]].
61	* SternTeacher: Rebbe Saunders. Excruciatingly so.
62	** Also one or two of the faculty at the college Reuven and Danny go to.
63	* TakeOurWordForIt: The various Talmudic debates that occur during the novel. Potok goes in depth about how Jewish scholars go about the debate, how they study for such debates, and what rhetorical tactics they use, but we never hear a single word of any of these debates. Also, Reuven's scientific reconstruction of a difficult Talmudic passage set by Rav Gershonson. Potok goes into quite a bit of detail describing the process of scientific criticism, but again, never quotes from the work itself. Considering that Potok is a ordained rabbi and a doctor of Jewish theology, he could very well have written all of those arguments in full, but such arcane ''pilpul'' would probably fly over everyone who didn't receive a full ''yeshiva'' education.
64	* TeenGenius: Danny. Who memorized ''Literature/{{Ivanhoe}}'', reads Freud as a teenager, and does all this while studying a rigorous quota of the Literature/{{Talmud}} every day.
65	** Reuven too, although he never quite gets the credits he deserves due to being constantly overshadowed by Danny. Reuven did, after all, managed to read through Bertrand Russell's ''[[DoorStopper Principia]]'' for fun (in High School), managed to recognize an obscure ''gematria'' on the fly (which requires a good knowledge of Hebrew--this was before the creation of the State of Israel, when the revival of Hebrew as a vernacular was still in its infancy--and the ability to do mental arithmetic at light speed), and knows the Talmud well enough to start doing textual reconstructions.
66	* TookALevelInKindness: Reb Saunders, in the sequel ''The Promise''.
67	* TrainingFromHell: Raising in Silence.
68	* WellIntentionedExtremist: Rebbe Saunders.
69	* WhenYouSnatchThePebble: Danny's father deliberately makes errors in front of the whole congregation in a homily on Rabbinic lore to see if Danny can catch it. He usually does. On one occasion it is Reuven that catches it proving that he is also TheSmartGuy. Danny tells Reuven that his father will stop planting the mistakes when he starts studying under Rav Gershonson.

Context Literature / TheChosen