In the Beginning [Paperback]

My one and only meeting with Dr. Potok occurred in 1975, while I was one of two *goyim* attending Jacob Hiatt Institute in Jerusalem, a study center maintained by Brandeis University. I was fascinated by his talk, and went out and bought "My Name is Asher Lev" and devoured it. Interestingly, Dr. Potok's visit coincided with classes on Biblical History taught by Dr. Chaim Tadmor from Hebrew U - which interested me so much in scientific Biblical criticism that I added a religion major when I got back to my college, and immersed myself in that discipline.

"In the Beginning" is, in my estimation, probably the most honest of Dr. Potok's books. It holds particular synchronicity for me, having been published in 1975, the same year that I began to learn about its core issues and the same year that I met him. The main character, David Lurie, is forced to confront both his growing awareness of scientific Biblical criticism, and its value, and the insistence of the world around him that he is rejecting all that they hold dear. He is given a choice between truth and isolation, or the society of those he holds dear and ignoring that truth. In the end, Dr. Potok's picture of "watering the roots" of religious faith is a powerful image, especially for someone who understands exactly what the book is talking about.

The book is longer than the three preceding it, and more complex; but it's issues are more easily understood by even a non-Jewish audience. It is a valuable and significant read; and one in which I gradually understood that Potok, like so many others, actually writes for the "dysfunctional" among us, those who feel isolated by family issues, substance abuse or tragedy, and yet somehow feel that we have some belief, talent or substance that we can say the world does not recognize, but that allows us to hold off the feeling of insignificance - that the more we are opposed, the more we think we are actually special. In the hands of demagogues or opportunists, this results in conspiracy theories, dreck like "Chariots of the Gods", or even well-written and attractive, yet completely fictional and inaccurate, stuff like "The Da Vinci Code." In the hands of Ann Coulter or Ted Rall, this encourages paranoid isolation from rational discourse on both the left and the right. In the hands of Potok, this is none of the above, but a compelling examination of the human spirit.

Perhaps it is fitting that I should love so much his most obscure title considering this book's power is in the understanding Potok has of the quiet genius no one seems to understand, yet who struggles so desparately to try to understand the world and his place in it. His brilliance brings him suffering. At the climactic confrontation between David and his father, I sobbed. You just do not know unless you live it. How many quiet geniuses are there to identify--and fall in love--with this book?

And perhaps it is this identification and the fact that his novel's are so autobiographical (Potok did indeed "live it") that I felt such a profound loss at Potok's death on July 23, 2002. For as long as I am able to read, for as long as there are printed pages I will love him through his books. Thank you, Dr. Potok, so much for Ilana Davita, for Asher Lev, for Danny and Reuven, but thank you especially for David Lurie. He has shown me a beginning. . .