Chaim Potok's novel The Chosen, an admittedly autobiographical portrait of growing up Jewish in America, focuses on the challenge of living a religious life in a secular society. Through the budding friendship of an ultrareligious Hasidic Jew (Danny Saunders) and a Modern Orthodox Jew (Reuven Malter), readers learn what it takes to be a committed, religiously observant Jew living simultaneously in two cultures, one secular and one religious.