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Rachel and Reuven take Rachel's cousin, Michael Gordon, to a carnival, where Michael has a mental breakdown over a carnival game.

The novel begins in the summer of 1950 when Reuven is dating a college student named Rachel Gordon.

The Promise starts a year after The Chosen left off, with Danny having just started his graduate program in psychology and Reuven having started rabbinical school.

The theme of the conflict between traditional and modern Orthodox Judaism that runs throughout The Chosen is expanded here against the backdrop of the changes that have taken place in Reuven and Danny's world in the period of time between the two novels: following World War II, European survivors of the Holocaust have come to America, rebuilding their shattered lives and often making their fiercely traditionalist religious viewpoint felt among their people. Set in 1950s New York, it continues the saga of the two friends, Reuven Malter, a Modern Orthodox Jew studying to become a rabbi, and Danny Saunders, a genius Hasidic Jew who has broken with his sect's tradition by refusing to take his father's place as rebbe in order to become a psychologist. It is a sequel to his previous novel The Chosen. But I’d love to know what happened next to Danny, Michael, and particularly Reuven.The Promise is a novel written by Chaim Potok, published in 1969. Perhaps the work in the psychiatric hospital would have been more shocking to the contemporary audience I found this the slightly less interesting part. The resolution of the plots was satsifying, with more left for the future. You wouldn’t think that the minute details of someone studying to become a rabbi would be such compelling reading, but I found myself drawn into the quiet drama, as the time of reckoning drew nearer and nearer. His relationship with his father was beautifully drawn, and something I will remember for a long time. I learnt a lot about Jewish scholarship, and the textual work described is fascinating – and I loved the way it brought stability, pride and conflict into Reuven’s life.

Danny and Reuven are growing in their respective paths, and the choices they have to make, as well as the promises they’ve made to themselves, their fathers, and their faiths, are thrown into sharp relief by their involvement with the Gordon family Abraham, who writes on Judaism from a more liberal viewpoint and is reviled for it in the post-Holocaust retrenchment into more extreme forms of the religion which is happening at the time, and particularly Michael, his conflicted son. I might not have enjoyed it completely as much as the first volume, but that’s not to say it wasn’t good. Sequel to The Chosen, and because I had it, I had to read it right away.