SOURCE: "Banished and Banished Again," in Times Literary Supplement, November 2, 1990, p. 1182.

In the following review, Morton presents a favorable assessment of The Gift of Asher Lev which, according to the critic, "heralds a new sophistication in Potok's art."

With the possible exception of Bernard Malamud, the postwar Jewish-American novelists have given out a version of Judaism that is secular and social, and largely passive. "Jewishness," a ready shorthand for qualities such as seriousness, humaneness, anguished historical awareness, rather than a system of beliefs, has provided a backdrop against which to play out dramas of self-discovery, rebellion and accommodation. In sharp contrast to these, Chaim Potok has shown a marked awareness of the internal tensions of modern Judaism, which are prior to its conflicts and accommodations with the Gentile world. His Judaism has content, not just form; beliefs, not just abstract "pieties"; an exact mentality that participates in a...