Summary Danny and Reuven enter Hirsch College. To his dismay, Danny soon learns that the college psychology department is oriented toward experimental psychology to the exclusion of the psychoanalytic work of Freud. The school is, in Jewish practice, Orthodox. Mr. Malter is busy giving talks on the importance of the […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Book 3: Chapters 13-15

Summary Reb Saunders, Danny, and Reuven learn that a major German offensive has been repelled in the Battle of the Bulge and that the Allies apparently will win the war. Americans, along with the rest of the world, mourn the murder of millions of Jews slaughtered by Hitler. Reb Saunders […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Book 2: Chapters 11-12

Summary Danny meets Reuven at the library and reads from Heinrich Graetz’s History of the Jews, a history book that is uncomplimentary (and not totally accurate, Mr. Malter later tells Reuven) about Hasidic Judaism. Danny tells Reuven that the picture of Hasidim in Graetz’s account is totally alien to what […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Book 2: Chapters 8-10

Summary Reuven is happy to be home from the hospital and looks forward to resuming the observance of the Sabbath. He asks his father to explain Danny’s particular sect of Judaism, Hasidism. To do that, Mr. Malter relates the history of the founding of Hasidism. Finishing the story, Mr. Malter […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Book 2: Chapters 5-7

Summary Mr. Galanter, the coach of Reuven’s softball team, takes Reuven to Brooklyn Memorial Hospital, where Reuven has surgery to remove glass from his left eye. The next morning, Reuven introduces himself to the man in the bed on his left, Mr. Savo, a boxer, and the youngster in the […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Book 1: Chapters 2-4

Summary On a hot June afternoon in 1944, in Brooklyn, softball teams from two Orthodox Jewish parochial schools play against each other. The two teams have a rivalry based on their different religious beliefs. Reuven (Roo ven) Malter, a Modern Orthodox Jew, narrates the story. His team, with their coach, […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Book 1: Chapter 1

Danny Saunders One of the main characters of the novel, along with Reuven Saunders. Danny, a Hasidic Jew, struggles to combine his father’s strict religious practice with his own more secular interest in human psychology. Rabbi Isaac (Reb) Saunders Danny’s father, and the leader of his Hasidic sect. Reb Saunders […]

Read more Character List

Introduction Potok’s novel The Chosen concerns the tensions of living a religious life in a secular society. This conflict is reflected through an examination of two Jewish communities in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York. Two Jewish boys, an ultra-religious Hasidic Jew named Danny Saunders and a Modern Orthodox […]

Read more About The Chosen

The Chosen begins in 1944 with a softball game in a Jewish section of Brooklyn, New York, between students from two Jewish parochial schools. Each team represents a different Jewish sect with a different level of religious observance. Danny Saunders represents a Hasidic sect led by his father, Reb (short […]

Read more Book Summary