Davita’s Harp

Stories by Chaim Potok just… get to me.

My Name Is Asher Lev. The Gift of Asher Lev. The Chosen. The Book of Lights.

Now this one.

Davita’s Harp is about a young girl in New York, growing up in the 1930’s and 40’s, whose parents are devoted communists eager (at the beginning of the story) to see both fascism and capitalism overturned. Half Jewish by ethicity, but born to parents who practice no religion but “the party,” she has a complicated journey to make before she knows who she is.

Like Asher Lev, Davita is an unusually gifted person who, as the story develops, struggles to spread her wings within the strict Hasidic community. It rewards some parts of who she is (her love for learning, tradition, community), but not others (her femininity, her imagination and independent thinking). The way Chaim Potok writes about orthodox Judaism always makes it appealing to me. There’s something very attractive about the tradition and structure and ritual and belonging of it. But he writes honestly, showing how its rigidness creates the possibility of legalism, exclusiveness, fanaticism, and even hypocrisy.

There’s something very truthful and brooding about the story. I marvel at the characters Potok has created here. Some of them became so dear to me by the end: Jakob Daw, a writer and political activist and surrogate uncle to Davita; her father, Michael Chandal, a journalist aflame with passion for the communist cause; her aunt Sarah, who’s essentially a missionary — a Christian who walks her talk. I came to love these characters with a wholeheartedness that was unexpected to me. (For those who’ve read it: the ending nearly destroyed me! That scene on the beach. My oh my.)

Then there’s Davita’s mother. What a multidimensional character! Is she wonderful — or terrible? On the one hand, she loves and respects Davita, even telling her at one point, “Read whatever you want. You’ll find your way.” On the other hand, she’s an overpowering presence, a hurricane of a personality driven by her wounds and her ideals, and dragging Davita along.

Besides the gripping, complex story, and the amazing characterizations, I find myself reflecting with awe on the mastery of Potok’s narrative. Every story has a narrator. But this book (also My Name is Asher Lev) made me try — unsuccessfully — to imagine how a writer could get so completely and convincingly inside the mind of a child narrator and unspool a tale with such perfect pacing and suspense.

Not that many books make me cry, but this one did. I seem to write a lot of raves on this blog. That’s because I don’t often finish books I don’t like. But this is a rich, memorable book, with far more to it than I can do justice to, well worth the effort its heaviness required me to work through.