When her aunt urges her to have faith in Jesus, Davita raises the classic Jewish objection: “Why is there a war in Spain if Jesus is the Prince of Peace?” Later, when Davita finds her mother’s King James Bible and takes it to synagogue, she horrifies her peers: “They all backed away a step or two as if I were holding in my hand a specimen of forbidden vermin.” “That’s a goyische Bible,” her friend tells her, making her blush with shame.
Through much of the book, Davita seems unsettled by the snatches of religious language and observance she is able to pick up. Her mother, a Polish Jewish immigrant, has given up observance of the mitzvot and joined the Communist Party she is now committed to fighting the fascism she hears is on the verge of consuming Western Europe. Her father was raised Christian in New England but has abandoned his earlier Evangelical fervor. The parents of Ilana Davita Chandal offer little help. At the heart of Chaim Potok’s 1985 novel Davita’s Harp is a child who is searching for faith.
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