“Tell me Malter, do you know who you are? Who are you?”, asks Rav Kalman to Reuven Malter (Potok 180). The question of identity is one of the main questions that The Promise asks. The question of with which group each character personally identifies with runs through the novel and makes its way into almost every interaction between characters. The groups available to identify with are the two extremes of Judaism, ultra-Orthodox and “American Judaism”. In The Promise Chaim Potok uses Rav Kalman and Abraham Gordon to present the extremes of Judaism and he shows with the Malters that neither extreme is satisfactory, but like the Malters, a middle ground, must be reached no matter the consequences.
Rav Kalman is a great Jewish scholar who had been a teacher in one of the greatest yeshivas in Vilna before the war. Then World War II began and the Jewish community was turned upside down. Rav Kalman and all his family and students were sent to Maidanek, but somehow Rav Kalman escaped. However, the horrors of WWII and what happened at Maidanek shape Rav Kalman’s view of what being Jewish and Jewish scholarship is. “When your world is destroyed and only a remnant is saved, then whatever is seen as a threat to that remnant becomes a hated enemy…We are both threats to his way of life”, says David Malter to his son Reuven when Reuven complains about Rav Kalman’s strictness (Potok 308).
The only remnant of Rav Kalman’s life that remains is his teaching. When his view of Judaism is challenged, as it is by Abraham Gordon and David Malter, he reacts violently, with hatred, spewing out reputation damaging reviews of the books that challenge him. Rav Kalman takes the hatred and the darkness inside of him and uses it to lash out against people he sees harming his beliefs that all his students died for. “They killed all my students in Maidanek” (Potok 169), Rav Kalman says. He does not want their death to be in vain.
In American Judaism, Rav Kalman identifies what he’s fighting against. “In America, everything is called Yiddishkeit…everything in America calls itself Judaism” (Potok 121), Rav Kalman says in his frequent outbursts. He is combating the secularism of American Judaism in his work and he will take any chance he gets to make the point that the new ways of doing things are ruining the Judaism he had been put into a concentration camp for. “A dangerous method; it could destroy the very heart of Yiddishkeit” (Potok 247), says Rav Kalman’s second review of David Malter’s book. Rav Kalman feels he must make his point: all things are not Jewish and only the most traditional parts of Judaism are true.
Even with his fundamentalist attitudes towards religion, there are times when Potok points out that Rav Kalman commits sin. “Rav Kalman is a fanatical believer in his particular type of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and does not hesitate to defend it even if that means that individuals are hurt in the process” (Abramson 41), points out Edward Abramson. Many Jews would view Rav Kalman’s book reviews as a form of slander, or lashon hara. “Why does he go around using slander against people who disagree with him?” (Potok 63) asks Michael Gordon. He continues, “There’s a rabbi in the Talmud who even says there’s no atonement for lashon hara. How can Rav Kalman be so religious and use lashon hara?” (Potok 65). By Rav Kalman using slander and breaking the commandments, Potok is showing Kalman’s need to keep his type of Judaism alive, and to make sure that anyone who opposes him is silenced. The need to make sure he wasn’t put in a concentration camp and tortured, and his students didn’t die for nothing drives his hate and his writing.
When Reuven complains to Abraham Gordon about Rav Kalman, Gordon tells him a story about a teacher who put down a rebellion in his school. The students were rebelling against the harshness of the teaching method and being forbidden to use new ideas. Reuven compares Rav Kalman to that teacher. “He cannot be the same as Rav Finkel,” Abraham Gordon says. “Rav Finkel never experienced Maidanek. You just might want to think about that Reuven” (Potok 298). Rav Kalman protects tradition and that protection lends itself to the hate of people who go against tradition, like Abraham Gordon.
Abraham Gordon is the total opposite of Rav Kalman. Gordon wants to make American Judaism less strict and something that all types of people can relate to. He wants make sure Jews keep their minds moving and continue dealing with the problems thrown at them. Throughout his life Gordon had renounced Judaism, but then came back to it, hoping to make it strong again and make it appeal to more people. He claims that he knew what would happen to Europe’s Jewish community before WWII and that knowledge drove him to try and make American Judaism “better”. “In Abraham Gordon’s dilemma can be seen the elucidation of a problem that affects many twentieth-century Jews…that is, can Judaism be interpreted in such a way that Jews will desire to continue an active attachment to it?” (Abramson 41). Abraham Gordon is trying to make the average American Jew feel connected to the past while making a new path for them to travel. Gordon tries to achieve this feeling through his writing, something that upsets many fundamentalist Jews, like Rav Kalman.
Abraham Gordon’s books are attacked by reviewers, mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, most of who fled Europe before or after WWII. As Reuven remarks, “There was no allusion to the loathing and hatred with which certain people pronounced Abraham Gordon’s name” (Potok 77). However, though many Jews hate him and he has even been put into cherem, the Jewish equivalent of excommunication, Gordon keeps writing and takes the attacks with a sense of humor. “I’ll have to show you the scrapbook I keep of attacks on me over the years” (Potok 246), Gordon tells Reuven.
Gordon doesn’t seem to be terribly upset over the attacks he gets from the fundamentalist Jews for “Gordon understands and can appreciate their zealousness” (Abramson 41). Gordon knows that the people who attack him have nothing of their old world and life left and “Abraham Gordon is a humanist” (Potok 77). The attacks hurt him, but he is firm in his belief of Judaism. He is not an apostate, as the warning someone scribbled in the cover of his books suggest. He has found his belief, it just happens to be different and more liberal than many people, including the Malter family, wish it to be.
David Malter is a teacher in an orthodox yeshiva. He helped found the yeshiva and has been teaching there ever since. The book he wrote is a central part of the conflict in the novel. David Malter uses a radical method for Talmud study called textual emendation, which “threatens the authority of the Talmud, for it meant that the Talmud did not have all the sources at its disposal upon which laws could be based” (Potok 347). All Orthodox scholars, mostly because of its basis in science, look down upon textual emendation.
Textual emendation is when a scholar changes a word in the text of the Talmud because he thinks that it’s wrong, which upsets the fundamentalists who believe that God revealed the Talmud and that the scholars who emend the Talmud are basically saying that God was wrong. Many of the scholars against textual emendation believe that the scholars who use the method will expand and begin emending the Torah (Five Books of Moses). David Malter would never do that, and by making that fact clear through Reuven’s refusal to emend the Torah (Potok 349), Potok shows David Malter’s ability to use new scientific ideas, yet not be taken over by them to the point of forgetting the traditions that he came from.
Reuven Malter, David Malter’s son, is getting his rabbinate from an Orthodox seminary, which shows “his refusal to become a secular Jew, as Professor Gordon has done” (“Chaim” 2552). He uses his father’s method of textual emendation at home, but never at his school for “the modern scientific manner was unheard of in my school” (Potok 119). He hides the fact that he uses the method at school, for he still wishes to be accepted as an Orthodox Jew. Some people, like Abraham Gordon, see Reuven as an extraordinary Orthodox Jew. “I’ve never quite met an Orthodox boy like you. You might even talk me into changing some of my views” (Potok 311), says Gordon. Reuven and his father are some of the few Orthodox Jews who try not to get mixed up in the battles that go on in the Jewish world between the Orthodox and the “secular” Jews.
Never ending battles of scholarship rage between the members of the two extreme groups. “We are at war friend. Didn’t you know we are at war?” (Potok 154), cries Reuven to his friend Danny after class with Rev Kalman. This war is a war of differences, the traditional Jews against the American Jews. This conflict is the main conflict in The Promise as Michael J. Bandler says: “one (a book) that concentrates less upon the beauty of the Hasidic world and more upon the tribulations and conflicts within traditional Jewry itself” (Bandler 369). The conflicts are almost entirely over methods used to explain the Torah and Talmud and over scholarship.
The fights and arguments take up so much time in many scholars’ lives that teaching and writing seem to become lost in the battles. Every little point in a method or a book is debated over and the debates sometimes fly into wild arguments, either through writing or through words. “It is a bigger problem than I realized…What energies we waste fighting each other”, says David Malter after Reuven tells him of one of Rav Kalman’s speeches against American Jewry (Potok 131). Late in the novel, Rav Kalman leaves his teaching job for a few weeks in protest over a new graduate school being added to the yeshiva. “They will not defile the Torah as long as he was still within the walls of this yeshiva” (Potok 315) says Reuven, mocking Rav Kalman. What Rav Kalman doesn’t realize is that by leaving the school in protest, he is endangering his ability to teach, something that means so much to him.
The battles rage not only through writing but also through the school. The students pick sides in battles, as Reuven says: “it was quite evident that the student body…had polarized into two camps, one that agreed wholeheartedly with Rav Kalman…and a second that felt Rav Kalman’s article to be typical of his effort to make the yeshiva a throwback to the ghetto yeshivoth of Eastern Europe” (Potok 217). This “side choosing” makes learning and scholarship even harder. It also makes the learning environment strained for people like Reuven who choose not to take sides. He is stuck being questioned every day about whether he is still seeing Abraham Gordon. Rav Kalman is so upset about Reuven’s visits with Gordon because he sees it as Reuven going over to the other side. After an explanation as to why Reuven is seeing Gordon, Rav Kalman stops pestering Reuven, but leaves him with a piece of advice: “But Reuven, do not become a goy” (Potok 307). Reuven will not become a “goy”, but will go with his father down the middle path.
Edward A. Abramson says, “The middle path is represented by David Malter” (Abramson 42). The middle path that Abramson is talking about is the path between the two extremes of Judaism. David Malter could also be described as “one who rejects neither his original culture nor the contemporary culture surrounding him” (Buning) or a “zwischenmensch” meaning “between-person”. David Malter shows this “between-ness” with his textual emendation method. He accepts the new scientific ideas about the Talmud, yet keeps with his tradition by not using the method on the Torah. The fundamentalist side of the battle dislikes the middle road and pretends it doesn’t exist. They believe anyone who isn’t with them is against them. “Malter, the goyische Talmudist?” (Potok 332) is a typical comment of the ultra-Orthodox towards David Malter.
However, even though the Orthodox side of the battle rejects David Malter, he and Reuven also reject the other side of the battle, Abraham Gordon’s side. “Not only Danny, his father and Rav Kalman but Reuven and David Malter reject them” (Abramson 40), says Abramson about Abraham Gordon’s ideas. Gordon goes too far away from tradition for the Malters to accept. “He asks very good questions. I don’t like his answers. But he asks some very important questions” (Potok 75) Reuven says about Gordon’s books. He is thinking about the same things as Gordon is, he just doesn’t take it to the extreme Gordon does. Abraham Gordon and his books cause a great deal of trouble for Reuven in his school, but the conflict forces him to think about where he stands in the battle of Jewish ideas.
After a fight with Rav Kalman, Reuven’s position in the battle is called into question. Rav Kalman demands to know if Reuven has read any of Gordon’s books. “I lied. I told him I had never read any of Abraham Gordon’s books” (Potok 124). By lying, Reuven avoided dealing with the question of where he stands. However, Rav Kalman demands to know the answer to that question, even if Reuven doesn’t know the answer himself. “Where do you stand? Do you stand with true Yiddishkeit, or do you stand perhaps a little bit on the path of Gordon? Where do you stand Malter?” (Potok 180), demands Rav Kalman. He wants to know if Reuven, along with his father, will stand in the way of his religious beliefs and ideas.
Reuven does not know where he stands in relationship to Rav Kalman. He believes in textual emendation, but he does not really stand on Gordon’s path either. “He was forcing me into a choice and I did not know what I could do” (Potok 181), Reuven laments after the encounter with Rav Kalman. This is just one situation of many that Reuven faces that helps determine where he stands. Most of the other situations also deal with Rav Kalman and the yeshiva that Reuven attends and all of the situations “force him to make certain basic choices affecting his family, friends and teachers” (Reynolds 369). Reuven is placed in the middle without meaning to be put there. “And I was in the middle” (Potok 196).
Even though Reuven is unwillingly placed in the middle of the battle, his choices lead him to the middle road as well. “I must know where you stand before I can give you smicha. Can you tell me?” (Potok 180), demands Rav Kalman. This statement haunts Reuven throughout the novel and Rav Kalman asks the same question over and over. By realizing the predicament he has been placed in and where his father stands, Reuven finally makes his decision. During his examination for smicha (a rabbinate) Reuven shows his choice for “I can’t tell you my choice. I’ll have to show it to you” (Potok 327).
Reuven emends the text of the Talmud during his examination, finally choosing to walk the middle path with his father. By making this decision, Reuven places his knowledge and experience with the underdog in the battle, the fighter who does not wish to fight but must anyways. Reuven and his father “come to terms with a puritanical background, discarding its severities and deriving strength from its virtues” (“Back” 370). Reuven and his father leave behind the ultra-Orthodox views of science but take with them the tradition that keeps Judaism what it is. This decision harms mostly David Malter, both physically and in his career.
“David Malter also must cope with Rev Kalman’s fundamentalist attitudes” (Abramson 42), says Edward Abramson. With Rav Kalman attacking him, David Malter loses sight of what’s happening within his own school. “He was being challenged in the single most important area of his life-his scholarship and his writing” (Potok 254), notes Reuven. The challenge is being offered at first from Rav Kalman, but later from another important part of his life, the yeshiva he helped build. The pressures affect David Malter physically. “He seemed reluctant to leave the house” (Potok 239), says Reuven. David Malter becomes housebound because he is sick of being laughed at and fought over. The two sides of the battle flow around him like a flooding river and the island he stands on is getting smaller and smaller. By choosing to take the middle path David Malter chooses to lead a hard life that will tear him apart from his school.
David Malter’s school had taken in many survivors of the Holocaust who, like Rav Kalman, stand in their beliefs, for they have nothing of their world left. They are all against David in the battle over his book and make his working life very unpleasant. Because of the atmosphere that is created David Malter “would leave the school he helped create” (Potok 350) and join the Frankel Seminary, the one thing that he really didn’t want to do. By leaving a yeshiva the Orthodox Jews believe that he has given up on Judaism and has totally gone over to the other side. The “secular” Jews also believe that he has gone over to their side when in reality, he and Reuven stand in the middle of the battle.
The middle ground in real life is Conservative Judaism, Potok’s personal choice of branches. “Conservative Judaism…values tradition but does not avoid consideration of modern thought” (Abramson 42) is shown to be the only path that encompasses all of Jewry in The Promise. Michael Bandler says “Potok is troubled by the growing influence of the right-wing Orthodoxy upon the American Jewish life” (369) which he shows in The Promise by Reuven and David Malter’s problems with the Orthodox lifestyle. The rigidity of the schools run by the ultra-Orthodox “turns away our greatest minds” (Potok 194) and the looseness of the seminary does not lend itself to great Jewish scholars. The only way that Jewish ideas can continue on is by inventing the “middle path”, a place where new ideas are accepted and old traditions are valued. The Promise is Potok’s cry for people to see Conservatism for what it is, the saving power of American Judaism.
A New Branch for an Old Tree: Judiasm in The Promise © Elizabeth Frommer. Do not distribute without permission