Two Boys, one American Dream

TWO BOYS, ONE AMERICAN DREAM

Baseball is a rugged sport, uniquely American. Two Jewish boys meet during one of the most hotly contested baseball games of the high school season, in New York City during World War II. The teams' rivalry--one team are Hassidim, the other orthodox--fuels intense acrimony between them until a freak accident during the game sends one to the hospital with an injury that nearly costs him an eye. The near loss of the boy's eye creates a bond between the boys which develops into a deep and lasting friendship.

Both boys, Reuven and Danny, are the sons of European immigrants. In The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, the boys feel the pull of the "American Dream" with its promise of boundless opportunity and freedom of choice--something quite alien to their European forebears. The boys instinctively sense this opportunity, and as they grow up, each develops his own set of ambitions. They are hardly unrealistic: each wants to go to college to pursue his own interests. The obstacle is their fathers who, as traditional old world family patriarchs, exert their authority to dictate what their sons can and cannot do. Thus the stage is set for the conflict between fathers and sons which symbolizes the conflict between the authoritarian old world and the freedom of the new world--the "American Dream."

The friendship between the two boys grows especially tight in the times when they are both trying to escape the careers their fathers want them to pursue. Reuven wants to become a rabbi. But his father, who is a greatly respected teacher, hopes that he will become a college professor or some type of teacher. Danny's father is known virtually everywhere because he is the most respected rabbi of the Hassidic community. Tradition, sternly upheld by his father, dictates that Danny be the heir to his father's rabbinate, a hereditary position. But Danny loves the study of the human mind and wants to become a psychologist. For both boys getting away from their father's wishes for their futures is a tremendous challenge. The boys graduate from high school and enter a Jewish college in New York. They continue to live at home. College allows them to stretch their wings, and their American Dream continues to glimmer, however faintly.

Although Reuven's father has hopes his son will be a teacher, he does not demand that his son becomes one. On the other hand, Danny's father doesn't even question his son about what he wants to do because he has already decided that his son will be a rabbi. He has also arranged a marriage for him. Danny knows this and in the story he says with despair, "I have to take my father's place. I have no choice" (86). But the sad part especially for Danny is that they are in America, and as Reuven's father puts it, "Reb Saunders' son does not live in Poland. America is free. There are no walls here to hold back the Jews" (113). It is hard for Danny because most people migrate to America to be free. But Danny is in America and still he is trapped. His father does not even let him read books other then the Talmud, the Hebrew Bible. Danny's father even admits that, "this is America. This is not Europe.