![]() The young man is torn between his family roots and his personal identity, caught in the crossfire between battling texts. He feels driven to some Gentile arena, like fine art, Freudian psychology, or scholarship that questions the origins of Scripture. A boy is born with an extraordinary gift that leads to conflict with his ultra-orthodox Jewish community. What happens when two pugnacious ideologies slug it out within a single soul? Most of his novels address this question, with a broadly similar plot. Potok was fascinated by what he called “core-to-core culture confrontations”. ![]() Their encounter is the theme of my favourite new author that year, Rabbi Chaim Potok (1929-2002). Two rival worlds eyed each other across the carpet. The second bookcase was populated by authors like Sartre and Camus, the leading literati and secular intellectuals of the West. One held 4000 years of Jewish tradition: commentaries on the Torah or five books of Moses, and the Talmud, 18 volumes of rabbinic laws and discussions. Secondly, I recall the living room of one observant Jew. ![]() In 2010, my father had cancer of the oesophagus. ![]() Anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff was a secular Jew, now delving into her religious roots as she faced death: two weeks after the final interview she died of lung cancer. In 2010 I saw a documentary on Orthodox Judaism in Los Angeles, In Her Own Time (1986 – see review). Twin Bookcases: Growing up with Binoculars What happens when two worlds clash within a single soul? ![]()
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