Chaim Potok

With a New Foreword by Dara HornRead it again for the very first time.In a powerful foreword that considers the events of October 7, acclaimed writer Dara Horn invites us to look beyond the theme of assimilation vs traditionalism and read As A Driven Leaf now to explore the challenge of maintaining a distinct Jewish culture while engaging with an outside world that is too often bent on conquest.Like Rabbi David Wolpe and Chaim Potok, the foreword authors for previous editions of this enduring classic, Horn views the novel’s themes through the lens of contemporary experience, offering interpretations and insights for a whole new generation of readers while inviting a refreshing reread by those for whom it is already beloved. All three forewords, as well as two discussion guides and a note from the publisher, are included in this updated version.A literary masterpiece, As A Driven Leaf is still regarded as a major influence on contemporary Jewish life and thought. Its gripping tale of renegade Talmudic sage Elisha Ben Abuyah’s struggle to reconcile his faith with the allure of Hellenic culture during the Rabbinic age in Roman Palestine transcends its historical setting with its depiction of a timeless, perennial feature of the Jewish experience: the inevitable conflict between the call of tradition and the glamour of the surrounding culture.As a Driven Leaf is an ideal selection for adult education classes and as recommended reading for congregational lay leadership.

There is no more beloved musician in the classical world than Isaac Stern, revered not only as a great violinist but also as a generous personality and a crucial figure in the world of the arts. One of the few people who has known every major classical musician of the last two-thirds of the twentieth century, he shares his personal and artistic experiences in this warm, passionate account of his life: the story of his rise to eminence his feelings about music and the violin and his great friendships and collaborations with colleagues such as Leonard Bernstein and Pablo Casals. Stern the man, the musician, and the cultural institution come alive in the most readable and revealing musical autobiography of the decade.

"Uniformly excellent."--The Jewish StandardThis rich medley of stories, poems, and essays features evocations of Chanukah by classic and contemporary authors including Sholom Aleichem, Nobel laureates S. Y. Agnon and Elie Wiesel, I. L. Peretz, Emma Lazarus, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Potok, Mark Strand, A. B. Yehoshua, Emma Green, Joanna Rakoff, and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. There are humorous as well as meditative tales from Israel, Central Europe, and the United States--works that capture the Festival of Lights as observed on Manhattan's Upper West Side alongside accounts of celebrations in shtetls of the Old Country and far reaches of the Diaspora including Africa. The writings underscore what it means to be Jewish in a world that's not always welcoming and include intriguing commentary about Chanukah's origins and what it means now.

"Vi fröjdas och till och med gråter lite när vi följer Reuvens historia. En berättelse som stannar länge i minnet och trivs där." NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS "Det här är en bok som får en att vilja stoppa alla man möter på gatan och fråga om de har upptäckt den." CHICAGO TRIBUNE "Den som hittar fram till denna bok hittar fram till en skatt." WALL STREET JOURNAL Chaim Potoks roman Den utvalde. Översättning Andreas Vesterlund, efterord Jan Lundius. Den vid det här laget legendariska romanen Den utvalde (The Chosen) utkom första gången 1967 i USA och blev omgående en osannolik bestseller. På bara ett år sålde den mer än tre miljoner exemplar. Allt sedan dess har boken haft kultstatus över hela världen och ständigt hittat fram till nya, alltid lika överrumplade läsare. Nu kommer den på svenska för första gången. Detta är en roman för alla och envar. En roman som kan läsas helt oberoende av vad man själv har för trosuppfattning eller rentav är övertygad ateist. Boken handlar om något så annorlunda som extrem ortodox judendom, alltså en mycket speciell verklighet, och den skildras inifrån. De två huvudpersonerna är ortodoxa judar i Brooklyn i New York. När boken börjar är båda femton år. Reuven Malters tillhör en modern ortodox judisk inriktning, han och hans far klär sig inte ortodoxt, de ägnar inte all sin tid åt det religiösa. Hans mor dog kort efter att han föddes, han har inga syskon. Han är mycket duktig i matematik men känner att han allra helst vill utbilda sig till rabbin, alltså till judisk vishetslärare - och då inom den mer världstillvända ortodoxa hållningen. Hans vän Danny Saunders däremot tillhör den extrema, ultra-ortodoxa judiska inriktningen - chassidismen. Han bor några kvarter längre bort i ett område med enbart chassider. Han bor med sin far, som är rabbin och tillika tzadik, rättfärdig ledare, och med sin mor, bror och syster. Danny är helt innesluten i den ultra-ortodoxa värld där man mest talar jiddish, där männen har spiralformade tinninglockar och bär svarta kaftaner och pälshattar och ägnar en stor del av sin tid åt att studera Talmud. Det är fråga om utantillärning och evighetslånga diskussioner av vad skrifterna har att säga i religiösa petimeterfrågor. Danny är sin fars äldste son och eftersom han är så oerhört duktig i sina Talmudstudier förväntas han överta faderns roll och bli rabbin och tzadik även han. Det stora problemet - romanens själva nerv - är att Danny har upptäckt andra sidor av tillvaron. Han vill studera andra ämnen. Helst skulle han vilja bli praktiserande psykolog, helt vanlig psykolog, han vill klippa av sig tinninglockarna, han vill lämna allt det ortdoxa. Men detta är omöjligt, otänkbart. Låter bokens handling väl enkel? Det är den inte. Faktum är att denna roman har förmågan att fullständigt fånga läsaren i sitt grepp. Man släpper inte boken ifrån sig förrän man läst ut den. Och efteråt undrar man vad det är för värld man vistats i under läsningen och hur den egentligen skiljer sig från ens egen. Chaim Potoks roman Den utvalde i översättning av Andreas Vesterlund och med efterord av Jan Lundius. ISBN 978-91-7742-594-6. Högkvalitetspapper, sydda ark, mjuka pärmar med flikar. 272 sidor.

A coming-of-age classic about two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s, this "profound and universal" (The Wall Street Journal) story of faith, family, tradition, and assimilation remains deeply pertinent today. "Works of this caliber should be occasion for singing in the streets and shouting from the rooftops." --Chicago Tribune It's the spring of 1944 and fifteen-year-olds Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders have lived five blocks apart all their lives. But they've never met, not until the day an accident at a softball game sparks an unlikely friendship. Soon these two boys--one expected to become a Hasidic rebbe, the other at ease with secular America--are drawn into one another's worlds despite a father's strong opposition. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the creation of the state of Israel, The Chosen is a poignant novel about transformation and tradition, growing up and growing wise, and finding yourself--even if it might mean disappointing those you love.

First publication of the complete plays of Chaim Potok. With the exception of the The Chosen, none have been previously available.

Asher Lev is a gifted loner, the artist who painted the sensational Brooklyn Crucifixion. Into it he poured all the anguish and torment a Jew can feel when torn between the faith of his fathers and the calling of his art. Here Asher Lev plunges back into his childhood and recounts the story of love and conflict which dragged him to this crossroads.

Following a baseball game that nearly became a religious war, two Jewish boys become friends. Danny comes from the strict Hasidic sect that keeps him bound in centuries of orthodoxy. Reuven is brought up by a father patently aware of the twentieth century. Everything tries to destroy their friendship, but they use honesty with each other as a shield and it proves an impenetrable protection.

"A superb mirror of a place, a time, and a group of people who capture our immediate interest and hold it tightly."THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRERYoung Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers. With his old friend Danny Saunders--who himself had abandoned the legacy as the chosen heir to his father's rabbinical dynasty for the uncertain life of a healer--Reuvan battles to save a sensitive boy imprisoned by his genius and rage. Painfully, triumphantly, Reuven's understanding of himself, though the boy change, as he starts to aproach the peace he has long sought.... "From the Paperback edition.

From the celebrated author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev, a trilogy of related novellas about a woman whose life touches three very different men--stories that encompass some of the profoundest themes of the twentieth century. Ilana Davita Dinn is the listener to whom three men relate their lives. As a young girl, she offers English lessons to a teenage survivor of the camps. In "The Ark Builder," he shares with her the story of his friendship with a proud old builder of synagogue arks, and what happened when the German army invaded their Polish town. As a graduate student, she finds herself escorting a guest lecturer from the Soviet Union, and in "The War Doctor," her sympathy moves him to put his painful past to paper recounting his experiences as a Soviet NKVD agent who was saved by an idealistic doctor during the Russian civil war, only to encounter him again during the terrifying period of the Kremlin doctors' plot. And, finally, we meet her in "The Trope Teacher," in which a distinguished professor of military history, trying to write his memoirs, is distracted by his wife's illness and by the arrival next door of a new neighbor, the famous writer I. D. (Ilana Davita) Chandal. Poignant and profound, Chaim Potok's newest fiction is a major addition to his remarkable--and remarkably loved--body of work.

"Rivals anything Chaim Potok has ever produced. It is a book written with passion about passion. You're not likely to read anything better this year."THE DETROIT NEWSTwenty years have passed for Asher Lev. He is a world-renowned artist living in France, still uncertain of his artistic direction. When his beloved uncle dies suddenly, Asher and his family rush back to Brooklyn--and into a world that Asher thought he had left behind forever....

"REMARKABLE . . . A WONDERFUL STORY."--The Boston Globe The father is a high-ranking Communist officer, a Jew who survived Stalin's purges. The son is a "refusenik," who risked his life and happiness to protest everything his father held dear. Now, Chaim Potok, beloved author of the award-winning novels The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, unfolds the gripping true story of a father, a son, and a conflict that spans Soviet history. Drawing on taped interviews and his harrowing visits to Russia, Potok traces the public and privates lives of the Slepak family: Their passions and ideologies, their struggles to reconcile their identities as Russians and as Jews, their willingness to fight--and die--for diametrically opposed political beliefs. " A] vivid account . . . Potok] brings a novelist's passion and eye for detail to a gripping story that possesses many of the elements of fiction--except that it's all too true."--San Francisco Chronicle

For Davita Chandal, growing up in the New York of the 1930s and '40s is an experience of joy and sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope of a new and better world. But as the deprivations of war and depression take a ruthless toll, Davita unexpectedly turns to the Jewish faith that her mother had long ago abandoned, finding there both a solace for her questioning inner pain and a test of her budding spirit of independence.

"Potok writes powerfully about the suffering of innocent people caught in the cross-fire of a war they cannot begin to understand....Humanity and compassion for his characters leap from every page."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEAs the Chinese and the army of the North sweep south during the Korean War, an old peasant farmer and his wife flee their village across the bleak, bombed-out landscape. They soon come upon a boy in a ditch who is wounded and unconscious. Stirred by possessiveness and caring the woman refuses to leave the boy behind. The man thinks she is crazy to nurse this boy, to risk their lives for some dying stranger. Angry and bewildered, he waits for the boy to die. And when the boy does not die, the old man begins to believe that the boy possesss a magic upon which all their lives depend....

The National Jewish Book Award-winning novel records the anguish, dreams, and triumphs of Asher Lev, a talented young painter raised in a cloistered Hasidic community in Brooklyn, as he struggles to resolve his gift of art with his religious background only to emerge into the great world of art, rejecting all else. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

A spirited classic of American Jewish literature, a historical novel about ancient sage-turned-apostate Elisha ben Abuyah in the late first century C.E. At the heart of the tale are questions about faith and the loss of faith and the repression and rebellion of the Jews of Palestine. Elisha is a leading scholar in Palestine, elected to the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court in the land. But two tragedies awaken doubt about God in Elisha's mind, and doubt eats away at his faith. Declared a heretic and excommunicated from the Jewish community, he journeys to Antioch in nearby Syria to begin a quest through Greek and Roman culture for some fundamental irrefutable truth. The pace of the narrative picks up as Elisha directly encounters the full force of the ancient Romans' all-consuming culture. Ultimately, Elisha is forced by the power of Rome to choose between loyalty to his people, who are rebelling against the emperor's domination, and loyalty to his own quest for truth.—Publishers Weekly

"Powerful . . . It successfully recreates a time and place and the journey of a soul."--The New York Times All beginnings are hard--that is the lesson David Lurie learns early and painfully in his life. As a boy in the depression-shadowed Bronx, he must begin to hold his own against neighborhood bullies and the treacherous frailties of his own health. As a young man in a world menaced by a distant, horrifying war, he must begin once more--this time to define a resolute path of personal belief that departs boldly from the tradition of his teachers and his own father, a courageous defender of their people. Learning how to remember his past as he nourishes the future, David struggles to complete his first long journey into ancient beginnings. "A major work in every sense."--Pittsburgh Press

Asher Lev is the artist who painted the sensational 'Brooklyn Crucifixion.' Into it her poured all the anguish and torment a Jew can feel when torn between the faith of his fathers and the calling of his art. Here Asher Lev plunges back into his childhood and recounts the story of love and conflict which dragged him to this crossroads.