The Promise Summary
Chaim Potok

The Promise Summary

Chaim Potok wrote The Promise in 1969 as a sequel to his previous novel The Chosen. The two main characters of the previous novel are Reuven Malter, an Orthodox Jew in the process of becoming a rabbi and his childhood friend Daniel Saunders, a Hasidic Jew who broke tradition by becoming a psychologist rather than following in his father's footsteps as a Rebbe. The Promise expands on this relationship and introduces others, all against the backdrop of a flood of Orthodox Jews coming to America after World War II to rebuild their lives.

There are two major conflicts within The Promise. First, Reuven finds himself torn between two worlds, a modern world and that of his traditional religion. His studies in school are pushing him towards orthodoxy. He has an incredibly rigid, fundamentalist teacher named Rav Jacob Kalman, who survived the Holocaust and now teaches Talmud at Hirsch University.