Writers

The Call. And the Answer

Interview with the author of The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev on the occasion of the Grinzane Cavour Prize. Focusing on Abraham, belonging, friendship… with the American writer and rabbi

Edited by Luca Doninelli and Camillo Fornasieri

For a novelist who tries to take what he does seriously, meeting Chaim Potok is something special–not only and not so much because he is one of the greatest novelists in the world, but because of the idea of justice which runs through his words, whether he is relating his childhood experiences, explaining how he writes, or discussing Abraham. You realize it immediately, as soon as he starts talking about himself. We went to see him in Turin, where he is to receive the Grinzane Cavour Prize.
“I became a writer at the age of 16, as a result of reading two Catholic books,” he says. Asked what was the source of his interest in Catholics (which inspired My Name is Asher Lev, his “accursed” masterpiece), he answers very simply, “My father was the friend of a Catholic who worked in a shop next to his. My father was a jeweler, while this man was a shoemaker. He was Italian in origin, and he sang all the time, especially operatic arias, and my father liked him very much. Everything started with that. Call it chance, call it the will of God. I have no idea why this happened to me, but it happened. And I grabbed the chance, without turning my back on it.”
In a nuance like this, there is contained the whole man, and the whole artist. Not all Jews are like him, and not all Christians.

How can one explain to today’s man what happened to Abraham?
That’s a very hard question. Abraham gave up a pleasant life for another life that he did not know, and without knowing if what it would bring him would be positive or negative for him. Thus there was in him a lack of knowledge, but also an inner strength that led him to pick up the gauntlet that had been thrown to him. Awhile ago, as we were chatting, you told me that what happened to Abraham had never happened in history, that it was something absolutely new. Well, this is not true. Noah also received a visit from God. Rather, Abraham was particularly receptive, ready to answer the challenge. The reason that he, specifically, was like this remains a mystery.

Fr Giussani has said that the difference between Abraham and the other men of his time is the same as the difference between the “I” and the “non-I.”
This expression of self-awareness places the stress on innerness, and thus on man, rather than on the consciousness of something, or someone, who calls from outside, that is to say, on God. It is true, however, that man’s self-awareness arises and takes shape from a call, from a special relationship with something that is outside. In any case, the answer man gives is fundamental. Both components have to be there, the call and the answer. From the beginning, Noah had a special relationship with God, and yet he ended up a drunk. Conversely, Abraham was receptive, and from that relationship a people, a history was born. This difference sums up, to my mind, the entire history of mankind. There are those who get drunk, and those who are present in front of God, even to the point of fighting, of struggling with Him, as does Jacob, who wrestles with God because he wants a blessing.

In a person’s process of maturity, what role is played by the virtue of belonging?
First of all it is necessary to belong to a community, that can participate in everything you do…

You said that the community participates in the life of a person. But isn’t it the individual who participates in the life of the community?
No, what I said was right. The community has to be inside all of a man’s life, especially in joy and in suffering–that is to say, in the most important, the crucial moments, when the tendency to close in on oneself seems to prevail. I am not denying this second aspect. I say only that for a person to be mature, both are needed, and they have to be always present. The problem of modern man is loneliness. And the attempt to emerge from it is the source of great suffering. Once the sense of belonging is removed, what is left is so-called “massification,” the mass-man; that is to say, utter loneliness… and I don’t know where this is going to end up…

What about friendship?
Friendship is born of the community, it is a fruit of the community. When a true friendship is born between two, three, four persons, it is a very great gift, and you don’t know where it will lead you.

Friendship, however, is something inside us. There are some very good novels, but they don’t arouse friendship. Reading yours, instead, one wants to get to know you and your characters. Is friendship transmitted, then, also through writing?
You see, one of the reasons that has always pushed me to tell stories is the need to tell the truth, with a capital “T”–the truth about the world I have always known and in which I lived and live. I try to communicate characters and events in their totality, without leaving anything out, not even the smallest, seemingly insignificant details both of the outer world and of the inner life of the characters. This favors, it helps the reader’s ability to enter into contact with the characters of the book, to the point that they themselves feel like they are a part of the book. And this, consequently, facilitates the reader’s relationship with the person who is the author, that is, with me.

To do this, it is certainly not enough to have a command of narrative technique, as people think today.
You need a great, great passion for the human being.

In conclusion, for a young reader who wants to know your work, what would be the first book he should read?
The Chosen, without a doubt. Then he could read the Asher Lev cycle. I am starting right now to write the third volume.

The emotion I felt at the end of our conversation can be summed up completely in the advice to read Potok’s books: not only The Chosen or My Name is Asher Lev, but also The Promise, Davita’s Harp, In the Beginning. Very few people in the world know how to write like Potok does, but nobody (nobody!) has his humanity, his lack of prejudice. Not by chance, we are friends–a friendship demonstrated by the mark that his presence at the 1999 Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples left on us. Or, perhaps, that we too left on him.