The Book of Lights is set in the 1950s…. [Its] core is the hero's inner development. His questing nature is shown by his choice of a non-orthodox seminary, his first step away from safety and certainty, and his interest lies rather with the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical writings, than with the safer Talmud….

Isaac Bashevis Singer has given the occult element in life a poetic resonance, be it in the Polish shtetl before the holocaust or among the survivors in America. Potok is alive to the same Hassidic tradition. But he does not have a sense of dramatic effect, he doesn't vary the pace or highlight important moments—everything has equal emphasis, so it is difficult to see, except in retrospect, what is significant….

Potok has chosen a difficult and exalted theme, but the development of the hero is not sufficiently related to the experiences he undergoes during...