The Chosen

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1967

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Book 1, Chapters 1-2

Book 1, Chapters 3-4

Book 2, Chapters 5-7

Book 2, Chapters 8-12

Book 3, Chapters 13-14

Book 3, Chapters 15-18

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Baseball

The baseball (softball) game is a symbol of war, with Galanter using war diction and Danny’s team viewing the game as a battle between good Jews (his team) and bad Jews (Reuven’s team). Referring to Danny’s team, Reuven tells his dad, “They turned the game into a war” (72). The symbol alludes to World War II, and links to the motif of the personal and political. In Chapter 1, Reuven and the boys don’t experience a real war but a figurative war. World War II has yet to play an explicit role in the story.

As the baseball game becomes a thing of the past, the literal war takes over and invades the characters' personal space. The war is inseparable from the Holocaust, which connects to Zionism and the dispute over the existence of Israel. As their dads are on different sides of the Zionism conflict, they have to stop being friends. The story pivots from a figurative war that impacts the personal lives of the characters but not the greater world to a literal war that impacts the world and the specific characters.

Zionism

Zionism represents engagement with physical reality, and the symbolism illustrates the dispute between Malter’s Zionists and Reb Saunders’s anti-Zionists. Malter describes Hasidim as “shut off from the rest of the world” and “frozen” (149). Reb Saunders indirectly confirms Malter’s view when he says, “What does the world know of Torah? The world is Esav! The world is Amalek! The world is Cossacks! The world is Hitler, may his name and memory be erased!” (181). The world is a corrupt place, and good Jews study the Torah and keep away from tainted material issues like politics. The Holocaust is a spiritual issue—a genocide that God willed for unknown reasons.

Malter and the Zionists don’t chalk the Holocaust up to God, and they engage with the material world and help build a Jewish homeland. Malter tells his son:

Some Jews say we should wait for God to send the Messiah. We cannot wait for God! We must make our own Messiah! We must rebuild American Jewry! And Palestine must become a Jewish homeland! We have suffered enough! How long must we wait for the Messiah? (267).

The horrors of the Holocaust require action. The status of Jews is too precarious to leave it up to the spiritual realm. They can’t wait for the Messiah—they can't bear more death and destruction. By creating Israel, the Zionists seek a solution to Jewish persecution in the material world. Through opposition to Israel, the Hasids demonstrate their faith in God and their ongoing isolation from the material world. They refuse to abandon their faith and engage with the physical universe. God controls who suffers and dies, not flesh-and-blood people.

The Personal and the Political

The motif of the personal and political links to Judaism and the Quest for Knowledge. The politics of Zionism involve knowledge and how to react to the fact that Hitler and the Nazis killed six million Jews. David and his Zionists use their political knowledge to support a Jewish homeland, while Reb Saunders and his followers use their knowledge of the Talmud to oppose Zionism. Knowledge of the Holocaust doesn’t erase knowledge of the Torah, and good Jews know that there’s not supposed to be a homeland until the Messiah comes.

The motif supports Silence and Communication. Reuven’s dad communicates the urgency to create Israel, while Danny’s dad refuses to supply an explanation for the genocide, asking, “Master of the Universe, how do you permit such a thing to happen” (259).

The motif also links to The Intricacies of Friendship and the ups and downs of father-son relationships, with the politics of Zionism straining Reuven’s relationship with his dad and causing Danny’s dad to forbid him from seeing Reuven.

The politics of war enter Reuven’s life. World War II is in Reuven's hospital room due to the radio and Billy’s uncle, who’s a bomber. The death of Franklin D. Roosevelt seeps into his school and streets, and he sees the people mourning the loss of the American president and commander-in-chief. Through the motif, Potok reveals that it’s difficult to keep political events out of personal lives—the boundary between the two is permeable.