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... hires and forties as the news from Europe grows more and more dreadful into David's budding years as a scholar buds, David learns that curiosity can be a dangerous enemy of faith. Mr. Potok's story cannot be recommended to everyone. Its prose is simple and smooth, but a heavy earnestness pervades it all (New Yorker 193).
The book centers on the conflict between the religious life and the life of imagination. What " finally, boils down to be a story in which its hero must eventually confront- yes the conflict between orthodox and modern approaches to the scriptures (Heart 373). All beginnings are hard. In the Beginning opens as David Lurie, now a famous Biblical scholar, now guiding his young students on the dangerous tightrope path of inquiry he himself traveled as a youth -- where a misstep might mean hurtling into bitter loss of faith -- looks back at his own beginning (Potok 1).
The story is tied to scriptural themes with unaccustomed complexity. I was surprised to see a reference to the Documentary Hypothesis. This is an explanation of how the first five books of the Bible were written. I learned about the Documentary Hypothesis in my Hebrew scripture class. This is a very complex biblical criticism in the middle of a novel. It does have references to Torah and Talmudic study, so non-Jews and secular's ones might have to look something Despite of the resulting fullness and complexity, the author has mis-estimated.
His patterning is too careful, too insistent. When every small episode or description is made thematically relevant, there is a loss of the spontaneity that Mr. Potok's fluid associative mode of reminiscence seems to require. He proceeds too cautious, as through fearful of spilling a drop of his meaning. An incidentally effect is make Jewishness seem an exhausting full time condition imposing a conversational style that moves only between the gnomic and wry. The most important aspect of the miscalculation is that within the larger context the author has created, his hero is insufficiently interesting (Irwin 413).
Most of Potok's novels can be seen as the fictional sites of cultural confrontation and how that confrontation affects the people involved in them. The cultural confrontation is between a minority immigrant Jewish subculture and the 'umbrella' culture (as the author himself calls it) of Western secular humanism. It is Potok's particular gift as a novelist and storyteller to have subjected these rather abstract areas of cultural expression to novelistic treatment and to have made them available to the common reader. He writes about these modern achievements with great enthusiasm and succeeds remarkably well in making them exciting for us, however complex they actually are.
Yet, he is not blind to the darker aspects of Western civilization, particularly since its history is fraught with an anti-Semitism that reached its greatest intensity in the Holocaust (Buning). This novel about a Jewish brain box puzzling at the irrationality of history turns out unexpectedly moving. Kept off stage and reflected in micros, the street corner humiliations, the tough gangs of goyim forcing copies of social justice on Semitic looking schoolboys offer much more controllable leverage on our emotions. It is this careful focus which ensures that the conclusion works. With five million dead in Europe and a race about to make a new beginning, a decision to abandon orthodox Jewish study and see what goyish learning has to offer might seem less than a climax. It is a measure of Mr.
Potok's plausibility and characterization that the act (viewed as treachery by the community) comes across as a necessary, heroic and loyal to a deeper Jewish tradition (Barnes 373) The mythic elements are superbly manipulated Potok has, at last, come to grips with the implicit in all of his previous work: the problem of sustaining religious faith in a meaningless world. He offers no easy resolution. Lurie (the narrator) at the end of the novel is still searching for the truth. That is what makes "In the Beginning" so powerful. It successfully re-creates a time, a place, and the journey of a soul. Its ultimate ambiguity is a perfect reflection of the response of an intelligent religious sensibility to life (Nissenson 321).
Personally, I found this book to be dull. It was the same thing over and over. It did not hold my attention. It seemed centered on a boy named David who was sickly with some mysterious illness that could not be cured. The illness was never named. In spite of the illness, the child was bright and intelligent.
He was ahead of his peers when he started school. He had self-taught himself to read both the English and Hebrew alphabet. It is centered on a Jewish boy learning how to interact with his parents. It seemed that it was a sequel to another story and it assumed one knew and understood the previous story even though it was not narrated.
It assumes you know and understand the history of the 1930 - 1940 's. There is one thing that I did find good about the book is that it seems to be writing about the conflicts of pursuing your dreams when every one else is trying to derail your efforts. The story makes you feel that you actually know these characters even though his characters may come from a culture totally alien to the reader. Amazon Review, web A review of "In the Beginning" The New York, vol. LI, no. 39 November 17, 1975, pg. 193 - 194 Author's comments, web Barnes, Julian; "Zion Tamers" in New Statesman, vol. 91, no. 2351, April 9, 1976, pg. 478, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 26, Gale Research Company Book, Tower, Detroit, London (1999) pg. 373 Biographical Data, web Book Synopsis, web Book information, web Broadway, Bill; Religion Georgetown University Washington Post; 27 Mar 1999 Buning, Marius Chaim Potok, March 1995 Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands Post-War Literatures in English Groningan: Nyhoff web Contemporary Authors Volume number 17 - 20 first version Gale research Company Book Tower Detroit, Michigan, 1965, 1966, 1976 pg. 590 - 591 Contemporary Authors Volume number 19 New Revision Series Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit London, 1987, Pg. 379 - 384 Contemporary Authors Volume number 35 New Revision Series; Gale Research Inc. Detroit, London, 1992, Pg. 384 - 387 Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume number 26 Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit, Michigan, 1983 Pg. 367 - 376 Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume number Vol. 112 (CLC 112) Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit London, 1999 Pg. 254 - 257, 284 - 289 Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume number eight Twentieth Century American-Jewish Fiction Writers, A Bruccoli Clark Book, Gale Research Company, Book Tower, 1992 Page numbers 232 - 243 1984 Dictionary of Literary Biography; Volume number 152 American Novelist Since World War II Fourth Series A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book, Gale Research Inc.
Detroit, Washington DC; (1995) pg. 202 - 215 Half Jay L. , American Dreams Southern Review vol. 13, no. 4 Oct 1977 Pages 837 - 844; Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume number 26 Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit, Michigan (1983) Pg. 367 - 376 Irwin, Michael; A Full-time Condition, The Times Literary Supplement, no. 3865 Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 9 April 1976; Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume number 26 Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit, Michigan (1983) pg. 367 - 376 Kaupunginkirasto, Kuusankosken, 1999, Chaim Potok web name = Jeeves&ads = &Meta Topic = Chaim+Potok&Meta URL = htt p% 3 A% 2 F% 2 F web Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher "New Promises, Familiar Story" in the New York Times, December 3, 1975, pg. 43 Contemporary Literary Criticism, volume 26 Gale Research Inc. , Detroit, Michigan (1983) pg. 372 Martin, Daphne; Why Potok is Popular? Feb 1976 pg. 73 - 75 Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume number 7 Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit London (1977) Pg. 321 - 323 Nissenson, Hugh, The New York Times Book Review 19 Oct 1975; Contemporary Literary Criticism Volume number 7 Gale Research Company Book Tower Detroit London On Being Proud of Uniqueness, web Potok, Chaim, In the Beginning; A Fawcett Crest Book, December 1981, Potok, web Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Contemporary Literary Criticism Gale Research Company
