Potok writes about two young Jewish boys in Brooklyn in the forties during WWII (as the book opens). Reuven Malter, the narrator, is an Orthodox Jew but his father is also open to English learning and the need to be open to the rest of society. He attends a Jewish yeshiva that teaches both Talmud and English classes, with an equal emphasis on both (which many other Orthodox Jews look down on because studying more than the Talmud is not important). Malter meets Danny Saunders, a Hasidic Orthodox Jew, from a sect that is totally hardcore, when their baseball teams play each other and Danny hits him on purpose in the face with a baseball, and Reuven has to go to the hospital. Danny comes to his hospital room to apologize to him and they actually become best friends. They find that each of them are different than the stereotypes they would expect, and meeting Danny opens Reuven's eyes to different perspectives and viewpoints on the world. My favorite part of the book is how amazed and astounded Reuven is after getting to know Danny, and finding out how different he is from what he looks like. Reuven's experience in the hospital is life-changing to him and gives him much more appreciation for his health and his eyes after seeing the people without any hope to get things fixed. I loved how he came home and walked around thinking that everything looked different, even though it was all the same--his perspective had simply changed, HE had changed.
The other thing this book is about is the relationships that Reuven and Danny have with their fathers. Reuven is very close with his father, who is open-minded and scholarly. Danny's father is raising him "in silence," literally never speaking to him except for when they study the Talmud together. Reuven thinks this is barbaric and begins to hate Danny's father by the end of the book. But at the very end, his father explains to Danny (through Reuven) why he has been doing this: Danny is so brilliant that it was impossible for him to understand or care about others' feelings or sufferings, but he needs to be able to do that to be a rabbi like he is supposed to become. This "raising him in silence" was to teach him empathy for the sufferings of others because of his withdrawals from having a relationship with his father.
After WWII ends and they discover about the horrors of the Holocaust and the extent of the deaths of their people in Europe, Reuven's father becomes very involved in the Zionist movement. Reuven is concerned that his father is working himself to death. Reuven's father tells him something that was so moving to me--and seemed like almost the crux of this book to me:
“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”
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