01 March 2004 02:57
I just finished "The Promise" by Chaim Potok.As with the two other books I have read by him, it affected me strongly, although not as deeply as the other two. After reading the first two preliminary chapters over a week ago, I sat down and read the remainder of the book in one sitting this afternoon. I have yet to decipher what the book means to me. It is told in first person.
It was anguishing to read this book, just like it was anguishing to read "My name is Asher Lev." The theme of the main character’s experiences as he expresses them in this book is angst. The book builds this from the start, from the beginning you feel the character being torn between two worlds, even though you don't know it at the commencement of the book.
Looking back already, I can see this book was carefully constructed, minor themes run and twist about the major themes, disappearing and resurfacing a hundred pages later. They are all interconnected, there is a fluidity about the themes, echoed by the discussions the protagonist has on the Talmud.
Love and Hate surge back and forth, fighting against each other, but unfortunately dependent upon each other. Love does not show itself much in this book, adding to the darkness of the struggle. It is there and very strong, but hate is what we the readers find in print.
There are three critical characters in the book, and they are focused on to varying degrees. All three are similar in their suffering.
one struggled and recovered, one struggled and was destroyed, one is still struggling.
the one who has recovered from his suffering helps save the one who has succumbed to his suffering. The helping one is aided by the third, who is still struggling with his suffering.
The protagonist is torn between two worlds, between the Orthodox and the modern world. He would prefer to take the Orthodox and change it slightly in light of the modern. But the Orthodox would excommunicate him entirely; the modern would destroy his faith.
Chaim Potok...
What I'm trying to explore in my books is one kind of such confrontation of ideas. Of cultures in tension with one another. A kind of tension that I experienced as I grew up and made my way into this world. All of us have one kind or another of ongoing culture confrontation almost every day of our lives. We don't think about it often because by the time we're out of our teens we learn to handle these confrontations almost in the same way as we walk and breathe. It's a kind of choreography that we develop without thinking about it too much.
The Promise...
"We're all full of rage. That's something I've begun to think about these days. Who isn't full of rage?"
"Yes. But most people manage in one way or another to handle it."
I found these quotes to be the saddest in the book, for they expressed one of the minor themes; that of hate, rage, bitterness, and anger at those who hurt us.
I for one am not full of rage. To have the love of Christ and to be full of rage are mutually exclusive conditions.
I found that reading about so much hate and bitterness to be extremely draining--and I was not the one holding the emotions! The way of Jesus is so much against human nature, but it makes so much sense when you think about it.
The Promise...
"What choice" There is no choice. I realized tonight while you were out that I have no choice at all. He's not asking me to make a choice. He's telling me to take a stand. I'm either with him or against him. All or nothing.
I...felt suddenly drained and hollow with the realization that the months of seesawing between the two worlds had finally ended for me this night with nothing but an awareness of how deep the separating chasm really was and how impossible it seemed to bridge it--unless you were a Danny Saunders and were rooted deeply enough in one world to enable you to be concerned only about the people of the other and not about their ideas. I was in between somewhere on a tenuous and still invisible connecting span, and I did not know how to make that span tangible to myself and to the inhabitants of both those other worlds. Maybe it could not be done. Maybe Rav Kalman was right. Maybe one had to take a stand and abandon one or the other entirely. I would enter Abraham Gordon's world if I was forced into taking a stand. The world of Rav Kalman was too musty now with the odors of old books and dead ideas and Eastern European zealousness. But it would be an unhappy choice. I did not think I could ever be comfortable with Abraham Gordon's answers. I found myself envious of Danny’s solid-rootedness in his world--and discovered at that moment to my utter astonishment how angry I was at my father for his book and his method of study and the tiny, twilight, in-between life he had carved out for us--and discovered at that moment to my utter astonishment how angry I was at my father for his book and his method of study and the tiny, twilight in-between life he had carved out for us."
"Can a son hate a father and not know it?"
"What would it do to him?"
That question was answered in three different ways by the three different characters.
At the end...
"I would not have hated you that way, abba," I said. "We would have talked about it."
"You are sure, Reuven?"
I nodded.
"You would have told me how you felt about me if the things that were most precious to me had ruined your life?"
"Yes."
"Haven't you hated me during these past months?" he asked softly.
I hesitated. "It wasn't really--"
"Why didn't you tell me, Reuven?"
I looked at him and did not say anything.
"What a chance we take when we raise children," my father murmured. "What a terrible chance."
Spoken regarding the raising of children...
"When the alternative is possible disaster, a man must gamble." --Reuven's father
"Almost everything of importance that a person does is a gamble, isn't it? Every crucial decision is a gamble." --Abraham Gordon
Earlier in the book...
Then Danny...began to talk about what it must mean for a man to see everything he worked for cracking apart, his life suddenly rubble, his dreams suddenly smoke..."I can't think of anything more than that," Danny said softly, "except a long dying. A person can do one of two things in that kind of situation...he can stay inside his world and try to reshape it somehow, or he can leave it and make his life over again elsewhere. Either choice involves further suffering, but it would be creative suffering that might ultimately give rise to something worthwhile."
"I know what it's like to be inside a small room, fighting. I was inside a small room too. But I talked. I fought back. You have to learn to talk and fight back. You have to learn how to do it even if it hurts people you respect or love. You're not anything unless you can learn to do that. I fought them but I respected them and I won...I tried not to hurt him too much. I fought with words, Michael. And sometimes you have to fight even if it means hurting people terribly. Sometimes you have to hurt a person you love if you want to be yourself."
Such pain and suffering... Reading this book makes me glad evermore that I was born in a Christian family.
I do not know for sure, but I would hazard this is a Freudian concept. Potok: "Most religious people, upon encountering Freud, walk away and will have nothing to do with him." He says this because Freud's concepts remove the supernatural and bases every on human nature. Potok: "Everything is tightly linked in a causal chain to the origin of this or that pathology. Understand the origin and you can more or less deal with the pathology. There is no intrinsic meaningfulness in the universe, no intrinsic sense to human actions. Most of our actions come from a kind of oceanic, unconsciousness inside ourselves about which most of us are only dimly aware."
I cannot really respond to the passage above about the necessity of fighting. There is a need to establish your own identity ("know thyself" was another minor theme of this book). Sometimes the establishment of that identity is a struggle, a "fight" if you will. But the emphasis on hurting others... I would equate that observation to looking at 2+3=5 and saying that any number plus three equals five. 4+3 does not equal five. Potok, and perhaps Freud as well, did not observe the entire equation, but merely took part of it and expanded erroneously upon it.
There was a long slow buildup to this book, mounting tension, with long periods of twilight. Finally, after a long wait, there was a climax, but the climax was not for the main character. It was a minor character who had an explosive release of emotion. The main character was the one experiencing the "long dying." The explosion of the minor character was therapeutic to the protagonist, but it did not bring a sudden and complete relief, it merely eased the tension slowly.
What do I learn from this book--what am I left with?
It is curious, because there was not the normal full release of tension, not a normal happy ending. It was not bittersweet either per se. Yet I wasn't left hanging, the ending was complete. It just faded out. All the situations were not revolved, there was still a long road of recovery ahead, but recovery was definitely occurring.
The ending did not do much to dull the ache caused by the first 90% of the book.
The ache: What anguish it is to watch someone you love destroy themselves.
All through the book I found myself longing to give these people the peace of Christ.
Their struggles, their anguish, all of it was unnecessary.
It is my unknowledgeable guess that to some degree the beliefs of the character Abraham Gordon echo the beliefs of the author... Rav Kalman represents the Orthodoxy. Abraham Gordon represents the modern; in the book his writings hold that God is a creation of man.
Rav Kalman shook his head slowly. "I do not understand it. How can a man not belief in the Master of the Universe and write books asking Jews to remain good Jews? I do not understand it."
"He loves his people," I said.
He looked at me, bewildered. "And the Master of the Universe? He has not love for the Master of the Universe?"
"He can't love what he doesn't believe in."
"I do not understand it."
"He tried to find something else."
"I know what he found." His voice edged into contempt. "He found an idea. When we went to our deaths to sanctify the Name of God, we died for an idea? How can such a thing be, Reuven?"
"He doesn't understand my concept of God," Abraham Gordon murmured. I had told him earlier what Rav Kalman had said. "I don't understand his. A God who worries about every human being, every creature. I find it an incomprehensible notion in the face of what we know about the world and about evil. A primitive concept. What do I do with the truth, Reuven? Evolutionary theory and astronomy and physics and biblical criticism and archeology and anthropology--they present us with truths. What do I do with the truth? I cannot ignore the truth. So I try to make it serve me."
No wonder Abraham's son ended up in therapy.
This book was disturbing, but I will definitely read it again. Knowing how it ends, I can focus on the nuances of Potok's themes. Our choices are gambles, books and words and psychology are tools, but tools can be turned to terrible weapons, and the people who wield them as weapons become terrible. Issues black and white can be bridged, but only with great difficulty. Forward thinking minds will always encounter blind hatred and opposition. Zealousness has many good points, but is buried in its own rigid dependence on tradition, the ways of the past. Zealousness cannot be combined with enlightened thinking according to the Orthodox, although they would not refer to it as "enlightened thinking." As Reuven's father complained, "They push away our best minds with their close-mindedness."
"The peace of God transcends all understanding" --Philippians 4:7
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