![]() First edition cover | |
Author | Chaim Potok |
---|---|
Cover artist | Paul Bacon [1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 1981 |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 400 |
ISBN | 978-0-4492-4569-9 |
Preceded by | Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews |
Followed by | Davita's Harp |
The Book of Lights is a 1981 novel by Chaim Potok about a young rabbi and student of Kabbalah whose service as a United States military chaplain in Korea and Japan after the Korean War challenges his thinking about the meaning of faith in a world of "light" from many sources.
The novel's central character is Gershon Loran, a young rabbi who is "the product of a parochial New York Jewish upbringing," who is "irresistibly drawn to the study of the Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah." [2]
Raised by an aunt and uncle after his parents are killed in 1937, in terrorist cross-fire in Palestine, [3] Gershon is taught that Judaism has made "a fundamental difference in the world." He later serves as a U.S. military chaplain at the end of the Korean War in Korea and in Japan, countries "where Judaism has played no part, has had no reality, has never existed," and yet countries that seem to be touched by the light he had experienced through his studies of Kabbalah. [2] Here he begins to see his faith, his people, and himself in a new light, in a way that casts doubt on his beliefs and his thinking. [2]
Described as "psychological fiction" or "psychological realism," the novel takes place during the years 1950–57. [3] It is divided into three periods: Gershon's rabbinical school days in New York City; service as a chaplain in Korea; time spent in Japan, including visits to Hiroshima and Kyoto, along with Arthur Leiden, a classmate from rabbinical school. [3]
The Book of Lights, like many of Potok's novels, explores "the tension between tradition and modernity, and the clash between Jewish culture and contemporary Western civilization, which he calls 'core-to-core culture confrontation.' [4]
Potok writes that the inspiration for this novel came from his own service as an Army Chaplain in Korea and Japan. [5] Potok writes:
What about a confrontation where the end result is no answers at all, but only questions? That's what The Book of Lights is all about. Admittedly a rather difficult book, deliberately so because of the difficult problems it deals with. I spent fifteen and a half months of my life in Korea and a little bit of that in Japan, courtesy of the United States military in which I became a chaplain. I came into that experience with a very neat coherent picture of what I was as an American and what I was as a Jew. All that neat, antique coherence came undone in the fifteen and a half months that I spent in that part of the world. I remember when I was very, very young, being taught by my father and my teachers that paganism was intrinsically an abomination. I came to Japan and to Korea and saw pagan loveliness I never dreamed I could see. The sheer beauty of that pagan world overwhelmed me. Although it was manmade loveliness, its beauty was created by the human hand for the purposes of worship. I learned to appreciate the loveliness of God's world in a pagan land. [5]
Potok's experiences as a military chaplain in Asia after the war inform some of his descriptions of war and its aftermath in this novel—including the dropping of the atomic bombs and the suffering of its victims [6] —but would later form the basis of his 1992 work, I Am the Clay, where the idea of the cruelty and futility of war takes center stage. [7]
The novel's title is a translation of a classic kabbalistic text, "Sefer HaZohar," commonly referred to simply as the "Zohar." [8] However, "light" in the novel takes on a number of meanings other than the light of mysticism or faith: even the light of the atomic bomb that the father of Gershon's friend Arthur helped to create. [9] As one scholarly reviewer puts it, "Pervasive light imagery provides a thematic structure for the novel." [6]
The novel was first published October 16, 1981, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. It was released as a paperback by Fawcett Crest in November 1982. [10]
The novel was widely discussed within religious circles as one that asked profoundly important questions about God and about ourselves in a world where we begin to encounter, sometimes for the first time, those of other faiths. [11] In Diana Eck's God: A spiritual journey from Bozeman to Banaras, she describes the scene in the novel where Gershon and Leiden watch a religious Buddhist in a shrine in Japan, prompting Gershon to ask his friend whether he thinks that God is listening to this man's prayers. "If he is", Gershon asks, "then what are we [Jews] all about?" [11] As Eck puts it,
If we conclude that "our God" is not listening, then we had better ask how we are to speak of God at all as people of faith in a world of many faiths. But if we suspect that our God is listening, then how are we to speak of ourselves as people of faith among other peoples of faith? Is our God listening? It is a disarmingly simple question... But this simple question leads us into the most profound theological, social, and political issues of our time. [11]
In response to a request from Carol Rocamora, Producer/Director of the Philadelphia Festival of New Plays, Potok wrote stage adaptations of a number of his works, including The Play of Lights, a two-act play based on this novel. [12]
The play was produced by the Festival at the Harold Prince Theater, Annandale Center, in May 1992, receiving mixed reviews. [13] It was directed by Rocamora, and starred Benjamin White as Gershon, and Matt Servito as Arthur. [13] Reviewer Clifford A. Ridley described the script as a transformation of the book into a play "of satisfying dramatic shape," but noted that the pacing of the play, "with its frequent and seemingly interminable pauses, is simply too much of... well, of nothing at all." [13]
The play was also performed in 1993 in Florida, at the Hollywood Performing Arts Theater. [14] It received a very favorable review in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where it was described as "a drama of aura and far-reaching ambition... disturbing theater... [that] raises more questions than it answers, perhaps Potok's purpose; but it provides an evening of thoughtful play-going." [14]
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the civil rights movement.
Harold Samuel Kushner was an American rabbi, author, and lecturer. He was a member of the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism and served as the congregational rabbi of Temple Israel of Natick, in Natick, Massachusetts, for 24 years.
Kabbalah or Qabalah is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal. The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in Western esotericism. Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof —and the mortal, finite universe. It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.
Panentheism is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.
Chaim Potok was an American author, novelist, playwright, editor and rabbi. Of the more than a dozen novels he authored, his first book The Chosen (1967) was listed on The New York Times’ bestseller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies, and was adapted into a well-received 1981 feature film by the same title.
Holocaust theology is a body of theological and philosophical debate concerning the role of God in the universe in light of the Holocaust of the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is primarily found in Judaism. Jews were killed in higher proportions than other groups; some scholars limit the definition of the Holocaust to the Jewish victims of the Nazis as Jews alone were targeted for the Final Solution. One third of the total worldwide Jewish population were killed during the Holocaust. The Eastern European Jewish population was particularly hard hit, being reduced by ninety percent. While a disproportionate number of Jewish religious scholars were killed, more than eighty percent of the world's total, the perpetrators of the Holocaust did not merely target religious Jews. A large percentage of the Jews killed both in Eastern and Western Europe were either nonobservant or had not received even an elementary level of Jewish education.
Jewish philosophy includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern Haskalah and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves.
Shema Yisrael is a Jewish prayer that serves as a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. Its first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: YHVH is our God, YHVH is one", found in Deuteronomy 6:4.
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world.
The Chosen is a novel written by Chaim Potok. It was first published in 1967. It follows the narrator, Reuven Malter, and his friend Daniel Saunders, as they grow up in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s. A sequel featuring Reuven's young adult years, The Promise, was published in 1969.
Tzadik is a title in Judaism given to people considered righteous, such as biblical figures and later spiritual masters. The root of the word ṣadiq, is ṣ-d-q, which means "justice" or "righteousness". When applied to a righteous woman, the term is inflected as tzadika/tzaddikot.
Gershom Scholem was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The tzimtzum or tsimtsum is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah to explain Isaac Luria's doctrine that God began the process of creation by "contracting" his Ohr Ein Sof in order to allow for a "conceptual space" in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist. This primordial initial contraction, forming a ḥalal hapanuy "vacant space" into which new creative light could beam, is denoted by general reference to the tzimtzum. In Kabbalistic interpretation, tzimtzum gives rise to the paradox of simultaneous divine presence and absence within the vacuum and resultant Creation. Various approaches exist then, within Orthodoxy, as to how the paradox may be resolved, and as to the nature of tzimtzum itself.
Sefirot, meaning emanations, are the 10 attributes/emanations in Kabbalah, through which Ein Sof reveals itself and continuously creates both the physical realm and the chain of higher metaphysical realms. The term is alternatively transliterated into English as sephirot/sephiroth, singular sefirah/sephirah.
Astrology has been a topic of debate among Jews for over 2000 years. While not a Jewish practice or teaching as such, astrology made its way into Jewish thought, as can be seen in the many references to it in the Talmud. Astrological statements became accepted and worthy of debate and discussion by Torah scholars. Opinions varied: some rabbis rejected the validity of astrology; others accepted its validity but forbid practicing it; still others thought its practice to be meaningful and permitted. In modern times, as science has rejected the validity of astrology, many Jewish thinkers have similarly rejected it; though some continue to defend the pro-astrology views that were common among pre-modern Jews.
Bee Season is a 2005 American drama film adaptation of the 2000 novel of the same name by Myla Goldberg. The film was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel and written by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal. It stars Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche.
Arthur Green is an American scholar of Jewish mysticism and Neo-Hasidic theologian. He was a founding dean of the non-denominational rabbinical program at Hebrew College in Boston. He describes himself as an American Jew who was educated entirely by the generation of immigrant Jewish intellectuals cast up on American shores by World War II.
The first sizable Jewish presence in Korea was during the Korean War, in which hundreds of UN Jewish soldiers participated. After the war, Chaim Potok served in South Korea as a US Army chaplain from 1955-1957. His experiences in Korea led to the novels The Book of Lights and I am the Clay.
Moshe ben Chasdai Taku was a 13th-century Tosafist from Tachov, Bohemia. Despite his own seemingly mystical orientation, Rabbi Taku is controversially known to have been an opponent of both the esoteric theology of the Chassidei Ashkenaz and the philosophical orientation of rabbinic rationalists such as Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Abraham ibn Ezra et al. He believed that both trends were a deviant departure from traditional Judaism, which he understood to espouse a literal perspective of both the biblical narrative, and the Aggadata of the Sages. His opposition to all theological speculation earned him, in the opinion of Gershon Scholem, the title of one of the two truly reactionary Jewish writers of the Middle Ages.
Kabbalah, the central system in Jewish mysticism, uses anthropomorphic mythic symbols to metaphorically describe manifestations of God in Judaism. Based on the verses "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" and "from my flesh shall I see God", Kabbalah uses the form of the human body to describe the structure of the human soul, and the nature of supernal Divine emanations. A particular concern of Kabbalah is sexual unity between male and female potencies in Divinity on high, depicted as interaction of the two sides in the sephirot, between archetypal partzufim, and the redemption of the exiled Shekhinah from captivity among the impure forces below.