![]() Potok can be envied by other novelists for his access to historical circumstances one would have thought exhausted - the tran sition from an old order to a new that was a constant theme of Vic torian literature. The novelist is always the conscience and chronicler of his race, and Mr. “My Name Is Asher Lev” takes these themes and makes them into a novel of finely articulated tragic power. Potok builds a strong and moving drama out of the tensions between the Hasidic and Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn yeshi voth, between fathers and sons, ancient and modern ideas of faith and ritual, and between Jews and the secular world. In Chaim Potok's first two novels, “The Chosen” (1967) and its sequel, “The Promise” (1969), the son of a spiritual leader (or Rebbe) of a Ha sidic congregation makes the difficult decision to enter the world as a psychologist. In their own eyes they are God's peculiarly chosen people, the Hasidic Jews. A somber, pious, industrious people on workdays, they dance and sing in their syna gogues on the Sabbath. The men wear beards and side‐locks, the women wigs. ![]() ![]() After the war they came in droves from Auschwitz, Maidenek, Buchenwald. They came during the war in devious ways from Lithuania, Russia, Hungary, Poland. ![]() There came to Brooklyn during and after World War II a strange people. ![]()
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