Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Potok, Chaim (Vol. 112) - Brian Morton (review date 2 November 1990)

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Brian Morton (review date 2 November 1990)

SOURCE: "Banished and Banished Again," in Times Literary Supplement, November 2, 1990, p. 1182.

[In the following review, Morton presents a favorable assessment of The Gift of Asher Lev which, according to the critic, "heralds a new sophistication in Potok's art."]

With the possible exception of Bernard Malamud, the postwar Jewish-American novelists have given out a version of Judaism that is secular and social, and largely passive. "Jewishness," a ready shorthand for qualities such as seriousness, humaneness, anguished historical awareness, rather than a system of beliefs, has provided a backdrop against which to play out dramas of self-discovery, rebellion and accommodation. In sharp contrast to these, Chaim Potok has shown a marked awareness of the internal tensions of modern Judaism, which are prior to its conflicts and accommodations with the Gentile world. His Judaism has content,...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Granville Hicks (review date 29 April 1967)
   2. Edmund Fuller (review date 15 May 1967)
   3. Sandra Schmidt (review date 20 July 1967)
   4. Times Literary Supplement (review date 31 August 1967)
   5. Richard Freedman (review date 14 September 1969)
   6. Dorothy Rabinowitz (review date May 1970)
   7. Washington Post Book World (review date 3 December 1978)
   8. J. D. Reed (review date 19 October 1981)
   9. John H. Timmerman (essay date 16 May 1984)
   10. Time (review date 25 March 1985)
   11. Paul Cowan (review date 31 March 1985)
   12. Cynthia Grenier (review date 29 April 1985)
   13. Susan Reed (review date 6 May 1985)
   14. Edward A. Abramson (essay date 1986)
   15. S. Lillian Kremer (essay date 1989)
   16. Andy Solomon (review date 6 May 1990)
   17. Nikki Stiller (review date 13 May 1990)
   18. Brian Morton (review date 2 November 1990)
   19. Irving Abrahamson (review date 17 May 1992)
   20. Bryan Cheyette (review date 27 November 1992)
   21. Felicity Barringer (review date 1 December 1996)
   22. David M. Shribman (review date 12 December 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright