[Chaim Potok] follows growing up Jewish in Brooklyn in the Fifties (The Promise) with growing up Jewish (and Polish-Jewish at that) in the Bronx in the Thirties and Forties [In the Beginning]. A trifle Brucknerian in pace, and told completely straight except for a closing flicker of fantasy, this novel about a Jewish brainbox puzzling at the irrationality of history, turns out unexpectedly moving. Partly, one suspects, because the European holocaust, which shadows the lives of the whole community, is kept offstage and reflected in microcosm: the street-corner humiliations, the tough gangs of goyim forcing copies of Social Justice on Semitic-looking schoolboys, offer much more controllable leverage on our emotions than, say, being slugged with Belsen. It is this careful focus which ensures that the conclusion works. With five million dead in Europe and a race about to make a new beginning, a decision to abandon orthodox Jewish...