Bukhara state university department of the foreign languages course paper

CONCLUSION
As a Jewish-American author, Chaim Potok has listened to the stories within himself and the stories that other Jewish-Americans have shared with him in order create an authentic community of Jewish characters who experience struggles with identity and exile in new and brilliant ways. Some of the ways that Potok’s characters experience exile and identity in a new way are: Reuven Malter’s decision to become more traditional in his Jewish beliefs in order to become a rabbi, Danny Saunder’s decision to become a psychologist and use his traditional Jewish foundation to inform his professional intellectual goals, and Asher Lev’s decision to become an artist who wrestles with the isolation of American Judaism through his artwork. Potok’s characters function in the dissonant region between American culture and Jewish culture, making decisions about what place Jewish tradition holds in their lives.
The decisions of these three Jewish-American men are all distinct from one another, yet each of them finds resolution with their own identity by figuring out where Jewish tradition works best for them. Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders continue to see themselves as Jews who must function in America and resolve to have Jewish tradition be a part of that American life. Reuven and Danny find positive resolution with their Jewish roots and this positive resolution is what Potok has long been criticized for portraying in his novels. However, even Asher Lev continues to see himself as an individual who interacts with Jewish tradition. Asher Lev’s story does not end with resolution of his Jewish roots, and this continued dissonance allows us to examine Asher Lev’s story in terms of the negative effects that Jewish tradition can have on the life of an individual who wishes to leave the Jewish community.
Chaim Potok divides the decisions of Jewish-Americans into two dynamics: commitment to Jewish tradition and flight from Jewish tradition. In his introduction to The Jews in America, Potok writes: Two dynamics are occurring simultaneously among America’s six million Jews: continuing and, in many instances, increasing commitments to Jewish concerns (religious education, Israel, Soviet Jewry) by about two-thirds of the group, and flight from virtually all things Jewish by the rest. Will the committed two-thirds succeed in fashioning an authentic American-Jewish civilization, one rich in new forms of individual and communal expression - as did the Jews of Babylonia, who, two thousand years ago, created a host of new Jewish institutions along with the Babylonian Talmud? Or will American Jewry become a modern-day version of the vanished, culturally attenuated Jewry of ancient Alexandria - so much a part of their culture that they finally faded into it? (11)
Chaim Potok’s place as a Jewish-American author is decidedly in the dynamic of preserving Jewish-American culture, so much so that critics have long excluded him from the world of Jewish-American literary criticism and American literary criticism in general. Chaim Potok should be admitted to the Jewish-American canon with resounding applause and joyous shouts for he has made great strides in depicting the continued interaction that Jewish-Americans have with Jewish tradition.