212:, Anne struggles with reconciling the communist cause with the geopolitical reality and leaves the Party. Soon after Carter breaks off their engagement. Ultimately Anne returns—though not with her daughter's fervor—to religious observance and marries her cousin Ezra Dinn, whom she had rejected many years before. Ilana becomes a star student at her Jewish day school. She is devastated when she is unjustly denied an academic award on account of her gender, but she remains determined to make her mark on the world.
257:- Ilana's aunt, a Christian missionary and a nurse who sometimes works in war zones and is very upbeat. She helps both Ilana and her mother when they fall into depression. She is Michael Chandal's sister. Often on her visits she tries to teach Ilana her Christian practices, however is not around enough for her teachings to set in and only manages to cause Ilana trouble in her shul and with the Dinns.
251:- Ilana's father, a journalist and a Communist, he is a source of great happiness in the house, he goes overseas to Spain to write for his newspaper about the Spanish Civil War and is killed during a bomb raid while trying to save a nun, a fact that Ilana becomes infatuated with. Husband to Anne Chandal and biological father to Ilana Davita.
287:- Ruthie's father; headmaster and teacher at the Jewish school that Ilana later attends with David and Ruthie. He is forced to award Reuven with the Akiva award after the board refuses to allow a girl to win the award, which would ruin the schools accountability (turning it into a "school for wives").
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A subplot involves the mystical
European Jewish writer Jakob Daw, another former suitor of Anne Chandal. He is deported from the United States against his will— in spite of the best efforts of his lawyer, Ezra Dinn—and dies in Europe soon afterwards. Anne Chandal, now Dinn, unconventionally decides
263:- a writer who is a close friend of Anne Chandal, insists on calling Ilana 'Ilana Davita'. Writes stories in support of the communist party and was gassed in World War I. He was especially notable for his close relation to Ilana, who commonly referred to him as her "uncle" and who she "loved."
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cited "stiff dialogue and stilted characters" and a "...somewhat YA-ish quality" in the narration, respectively. With regards to plot, biographer Edward A. Abramson felt that as with his other novels, Potok's tendency to forego emphasis of a book's dramatic moments continues here, leading to a
393:) wrote, "Potok's insight into the mind and heart of an adolescent girl...will not be quickly forgotten". In addition to the novel's protagonist, reviewers found much to like in Potok's treatment of what had become at that point standard themes for him. Quoting from the
293:- An athletic, popular classmate of Ilana's and the runner up for the Akiva Award. Although the school offered him the Akiva award, he refused it saying "I don't want anything I don't earn, Ilana ... It wasn't mine, it was yours. What they did wasn't right".
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change his life course and inspire him to become a
Communist; Michael is killed while reporting on the Spanish Civil War, sending his wife and daughter into a tailspin; and Stalin's pact with Hitler ends Anne Chandal and Charles Carter's romance.
239:– Main character, very intelligent for her age but is still frightened of many things. Avid reader who loves to use her imagination, later in the book becomes a great writer and semi-religious daughter of Anne and Michael Chandal.
27:
194:, and Ilana and her mother both struggle to cope with their grief. They are often at odds with each other as Ilana becomes more and more interested in traditional Judaism—even asserting her right to say
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wrote, "Ilana's perceptions of the harsh world of her parents is a stunning one, especially as balanced against the yearnings and disappointments of her own life" while Marcia R. Hoffman (reviewing for
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family. Both of her parents are haunted by bitter and violent memories from their youths, and both have, in consequence, turned their backs on their pasts in order to become active members of the
269:- an immigration lawyer and devoted Jew who is a cousin of Anne Chandal, he helps Jakob Daw with his visa into the U.S. and later marries Anne Chandal after Michael Chandal's death in Spain.
401:: "...the ideas here are rich, provocative, thickly interesting: the soul's desire for sustainable faith, the tension between political, worldly justice and religious, spiritual justice."
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of the extreme right in my own tradition, and how those two fundamentalisms deeply hurt individuals profoundly committed to them, and what those individuals do in the wake of that pain.
275:- Ezra Dinn's bookish son, who is the same age as Ilana. He is very smart for his age and goes to a private Jewish academy, he befriends Ilana and later becomes her stepbrother.
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for her non-Jewish father—while Anne
Chandal devotes herself to the Party and becomes involved in a new relationship with a young Communist historian, Charles Carter. When
178:. Ilana's early childhood is fraught with mystery and struggle as the neighbors eye the Chandal family with suspicion. When Michael Chandal, already wounded once in the
245:- Ilana's mother, a Communist who is devoted to serving her party, she is anti-religion but was once a devoted Jew, is married to Michael Chandal and has a dark past.
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country store in the summer of 1983. Likewise, in her youth the author's wife Adena was also, like Ilana Davita, denied an academic prize due to her gender.
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and in friendship with observant Jews, including her neighbor Ruthie
Helfman and her distant cousin, David Dinn. Michael Chandal is killed in Spain, at
380:"flattening effect". Yet, despite these deficiencies in style, most critics were taken with Potok's depiction of Ilana Davita. An unnamed reviewer in
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come from the author's life. The harp in the title, for example, was inspired by an actual door harp that Potok and his wife came upon in a
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is the manner in which world events intersect with and shape individual lives. So, for example, Michael
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was reviewed by a number of major publications. Though critics were not uniformly glowing, the general consensus said that
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Reed, Susan (6 May 1985). "The Melody of Davita's Harp May Be New, but Author Chaim Potok's Judaic Themes Are
Familiar".
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Abramson, Edward A. (1986). Chaim Potok. Twayne's United States Author Series. Boston, MA: Twayne
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was a high-quality book, though not the author's best. Cynthia
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Though such a novel was never written, Ilana Dinn does reappear in the Potok's 2001 collection
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Hoffman, Marcia R. (15 February 1985). "Davita's Harp". Library
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Several reviewers and the author himself have alluded to a sequel or sequels to
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In New York City of the 1930s, Ilana Davita
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for her old friend, even though she is a woman and women did not say
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Grenier, Cynthia (29 April 1985). "Search of a Spiritual Pacifier".
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Cowan, Paul (31 March 1985). "The Faiths of Her Childhood".
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Unattributed (25 March 1985). "A review of Davita's Harp".
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http://www.lasierra.edu/~ballen/potok/Teachers.davita.html
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is a confrontation between two fundamentalisms. . . the
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Reuven Malter, a character from Potok's first novel,
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Unattributed (15 December 1984). Untitled Review of
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512:The New York Times Review of Books
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615:personal communication to Andy S.
351:makes an appearance in the book.
237:Ilana Davita Chandal (later Dinn)
170:father from an old and wealthy
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373:) and an unnamed critic from
816:Novels set in New York City
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359:Being Potok's sixth novel,
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811:Fiction set in the 1930s
325:religious fundamentalism
525:The Wall Street Journal
370:The Wall Street Journal
166:immigrant mother and a
821:Jewish American novels
313:secular fundamentalism
826:Alfred A. Knopf books
806:Novels by Chaim Potok
705:The Gift of Asher Lev
662:Reuven Malther novels
556:Abramson (1986), 135
801:1985 American novels
697:My Name Is Asher Lev
415:Old Men at Midnight.
142:Several elements in
206:non-aggression pact
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732:The Book of Lights
481:2006-07-16 at the
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285:Mr. Helfman
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795:Categories
778:The Chosen
670:The Chosen
547:53 (1): 14
420:References
347:The Chosen
273:David Dinn
232:Characters
355:Reception
338:Centralia
321:Stalinism
267:Ezra Dinn
261:Jakob Daw
188:synagogue
168:Christian
80:hardcover
55:Published
571:Booklist
479:Archived
383:Booklist
226:Orthodox
204:signs a
192:Guernica
118:11235019
47:Language
604:: 80-81
514:: 12-13
501:pg. 136
436:: 81-83
405:Sequels
317:Marxism
222:kaddish
218:kaddish
216:to say
197:kaddish
148:Vermont
90:371 pp
78:Print (
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