The Book of Lights
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- Synopsis
- Writing at the highest emotional level--and with the power to evoke our deepest responses that have made all his novels, beginning with The Chosen, the acclaimed and cherished Chaim Potok now gives us his most ambitious work of fiction, his most moving vision of the dreams and the dilemma of the moral man. At the center of the novel is Gershon Loran, a young rabbi, the product of a parochial New York Jewish upbringing--whose early life seems to have been shaped by darkly irrational circumstances. Since boyhood, Gershon has been impelled to turn away from "a strangely terrifying [outer] world" and go inward, toward a place in himself from which his first vision arises at age sixteen. It is a moment of such exquisite clarity, such awesome possibility, and such profound relief that he lives from then on in the anticipation of its return. But his waiting takes the form of passivity, and, though he is responsible and successful, he expresses no joy, no rage, no exultation, no pain. These emotions--all emotion--Gershon seems to reserve for his visions which grow more frequent, more complex, and more important to him as he is irresistibly drawn to the study of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah. He had been raised in the absolute belief that "the Jewish religion made a fundamental difference in the world." However, at the end of the Korean War, Gershon finds himself a chaplain in a country where Judaism has played no part, has had no reality, has never existed. In this "pagan" land, Gershon begins to see his own people and himself in a new light as the secure, enclosed life he has always led begins to dissolve into unreality and doubt. Also, Gershon is further shaken when his seminary friend Arthur Leiden, a great physicist's son, arrives in Korea. Author's own faith in Judaism had been deeply imperiled by his anguish over his father's part in the creation of the atomic bomb. Joining his friend Arthur on a pilgrimage of expiation to Japan, Gershon discovers yet another land untouched by Judaism, a land that nevertheless seems to him to be made of pure light--the light he has glimpsed before only in Kabbalah. Here, Gershon has the most disturbing and revelatory of his vision--encompassing both light and dark, both good and evil, just as life must; just as, he begins to understand, Judaism must, if it is to remain a living faith.
- Copyright:
- 1981
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 373 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780394520315
- Publisher:
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Date of Addition:
- 06/21/09
- Copyrighted By:
- Chaim Potok
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Literature and Fiction, Religion and Spirituality
- Submitted By:
- Barbara Baker
- Proofread By:
- Barbara Baker
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.