The Promise (1969). Content and Description

Potok wrote several paired novels; The Chosen and The Promise are his first attempts at continuing character development into another novel. The Promise begins at the end of summer 1950, after Reuven and Danny have graduated. As both characters are headed off to graduate programs, they are brought together by Michael Gordon, a boy who is deeply disturbed but who refuses to speak about his psychological afflictions.

While Reuven struggles to deal with his new Talmud instructor, Rav Kalman, Danny struggles to find the answers for Michael’s problems. Rav Kalman and Michael are angry with the world; however, they demonstrate their anger in different ways. Rav Kalman, a Holocaust survivor, immigrates to America with strong ideas about Talmud and the rabbinate. Because Reuven uses textual criticism, Rav Kalman threatens his smicha (rabbinical ordination). Michael, hating his father for being an excommunicated Jew, despises overly religious Jews, repeatedly telling people, “ ‘You’re like all the others. . . . You’re no different than the others’” (chapter 1).

As the novel concludes, the obstacles experienced by Reuven and Danny ease. The problems have not ended, but for the moment the tensions have subsided. Rav Kalman grants Reuven smicha but does not agree with his method of textual criticism; Michael admits to hating his parents but still has to undergo therapy with Danny for complete healing.

Critics consider The Promise to be the most stylistically weak of all of Potok’s novels. They argue that he tries to juggle three distinct narratives in Reuven, Danny, and Michael, and each of the characters’ stories is weakened as a result. He does not blend his explanations of psychology into the text as well as he did with the information in The Chosen. In spite of the criticisms of the text, Potok does deal with weighty issues in Judaism and 20th-century thought: How do Jewish people, the supposed chosen of God, account for the horrors of the Holocaust? How do people rebuild when everything they have has been destroyed? How can European Jewry and American Jewry coexist to create a stronger Jewish community?

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Before the narrative of The Promise begins, Potok quotes the rebbe of Kotzk: “If Thou [God] dost not keep Thy Covenant [that the Jews would be God’s special people and He would always care for them], then neither will I keep that Promise [the promise to worship only one God], and it is all over, we are through being Thy chosen people, Thy peculiar treasure.” How might this statement apply to some of the characters in the novel? Which characters seem most troubled by post Holocaust events? How does Potok treat issues of faith in this novel?

In The Chosen and The Promise, Reuven encounters other Jewish people with different notions of religious faith, who cause him distress. Reb Saunders (The Chosen) stands between him and his friendship with Danny when Reuven’s father becomes active in the Zionist movement; Rav Kalman (The Promise) stands between him and his smicha when he defends his father’s textual criticism of the Talmud. Consider the character development of Reb Saunders and Rav Kalman: Are these men sympathetic characters? Defend your answer. Does Reuven learn something about himself and the world through these men? Does Potok provide any explanation for why these men are the way they are?