Potok describes the major social and political issues of the 1930s-1940s: socialism and communism in both the United States and elsewhere, the Stalinist terror, the Spanish Civil War, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Hitler's rise to power, and the Holocaust all form the historical backdrop of Davita's world.

The social situation of world Jewry forms another dominant theme with the inclusion of the character Jakob Daw.

But the social issues relevant to American Jewry form the foreground of the novel and dominate its themes, characters, and setting. The Orthodox Jewish position on the role of women in ritual worship and religious education is a major theme of this novel. The tensions between the secular world and the religious world of the Jews form another.

Of particular interest to Potok is the relative value of several different forms of social and political consciousness.

Jewish, secular, and Christian...