The Promise (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Chaim Potok
- First Published: 1969
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Fiction of manners
- Time of Work: 1944 to the mid-1950’s
- Setting: New York City
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1950’s, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Parents and children, Tradition, Teenagers, New York City, Religion, Friendship, Jews or Jewish life, Fathers, Judaism, Talmud, Rabbis, Synagogues
- Locales: New York, NY
Characters Discussed
Reuven Malter, an Orthodox Jew who narrates his seminary experiences as he prepares for ordination, or smicha. Reuven faces opposition to his use of his father’s methods of textual criticism, especially from Rav Jacob Kalman, who is teaching Reuven the Talmud. Along with his seminary studies, Reuven struggles to help Michael Gordon. Reuven risks his chances of obtaining smicha to help Michael, whose father is under the ban of excommunication by the strict Orthodox Jewish community. Because of his bold stand of accepting his father’s methods of studying...
[The entire page is 739 words long]
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