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Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Mr. Malter & Reb Saunders:
Like their sons, Mr. Malter and Reb Saunders also appear as narrative foils throughout The Chosen, particularly in their views towards Zionism and the Zionist project. Readers learn that the two men largely respect each other, but they hold incredibly strong beliefs regarding the value or non-value of Hasidism. Evidence for Malter and Saunders’s role as foils appears regularly throughout the novel as the men debate and spar, with one example appearing in Chapter 7:
“Your father is a great scholar. But what he writes, ah, what he writes!” He shook his head. “I worry myself about my son’s friends, especially if such a friend is the son of David Malter. Ah, what your father writes! Criticism. Scientific criticism. Ah! So when he tells me you are now his friend, I worry myself.”
Above, Saunders worries himself over the blossoming friendship between Danny, his Hasidic son, and Reuven. Saunders assumes—perhaps without enough evidence—that Reuven carries the exact beliefs and values as his father, which are nearly opposite to Saunders’s. Mr. Malter, an Orthodox Jew, believes that Jewish people around the world have a right to self-determination, which must manifest in the creation of Israel, the Jewish nation-state. Malter believes that this self-determination is inherently political rather than solely spiritual, due to the horrors of the Holocaust and the political entities which supported and enabled it.
Saunders, on the other hand, opposes the state of Israel, believing that only after the coming of the Messiah should Jews create a unified Jewish homeland. The differences between these two men—including their wary preconceptions about each other—shape the novel itself, which centers its narrative around the development of Zionism in the 1940s.
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