["The Chosen"] starts with a rousing softball game between two Jewish parochial schools that quickly explodes into a bloody holy war. This is, unfortunately, the dramatic highpoint of the novel, and it's over by page 37.

Thereafter, until an emotionally charged resolution near the very end, we have a long, earnest, somewhat affecting and sporadically fascinating tale of religious conflict and generational confrontation in which the characters never come fully alive because they are kept subservient to theme: They don't have ideas so much as they represent ideas….

Mr. Potok offers a great deal of fascinating information about Jewish customs, the intricacies of Talmudic study, the origins of Hasidism, the constant strain in being both religiously Jewish and American, and, obliquely, the importance of women in the lives of [the] four males, which is apparently nil. Otherwise, the book is suffused with Wisdom and Empathy to the frequent point...