In Chaim Potok’s novel The Chosen, Danny Saunders’s Jewish religious adulthood is marked by a bar mitzvah.
The Chosen, published in 1967, follows Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter, two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn during the 1940s. Their friendship develops across differences in family background, religious outlook, and expectations about the future.
A bar mitzvah is the Jewish coming-of-age milestone traditionally associated with a boy reaching religious responsibility. The phrase literally means “son of the commandment.” In the novel’s historical setting, the ceremony connects Danny to Jewish learning, communal identity, and his father’s Hasidic tradition.
A common mix-up is confusing the ceremony with a brit milah, which is the ritual circumcision traditionally performed for a Jewish boy in infancy. A bat mitzvah is the corresponding coming-of-age term traditionally used for a girl. Potok’s story uses Danny’s religious upbringing as part of its wider exploration of family duty, scholarship, and personal choice.