Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok
Born	February 17 1929(1929-02-17) Bronx, New York
Died	July 23 2002 (aged 73) Merion, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist, Rabbi
Nationality	United States
Genres	Literary fiction

Chaim Potok (February 17, 1929 - July 23, 2002) was an American Jewish author and rabbi.

Biography

Herman Harold Potok was born in the Bronx to Benjamin Max (d. 1958) and Mollie (Friedman) Potok (d. 1985), Jewish immigrants from Poland. His Hebrew name was Chaim Tzvi. He received an Conservative Jewish education. After reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as a teenager he decided to become a writer.

In 1950, Potok graduated from Yeshiva University with a B.A., summa cum laude, in English Literature. After receiving a master's degree in Hebrew literature, and his later rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1954, Potok joined the U.S. Army as a chaplain. He served in South Korea from 1955 to 1957. He described his time in South Korea as a transformative experience. South Korean culture had been deeply influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism through the centuries, and Christian missionary activity had proven to be highly successful in the 20th century. Brought up to believe that the Jewish people were central to history and God's plans, he experienced a region where there were almost no Jews and no anti-semitism, yet whose religious believers prayed with the same fervor that he saw in the Orthodox synagogues at home.

On June 8, 1958, Potok married Adena Sara Mosevitzsky, a psychiatric social worker, whom he met in 1952 at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. They had three children: Rena, Naama, and Akiva.

From 1964 to 1975, Potok edited Conservative Judaism and also served as editor, from 1965-1974, of the Jewish Publication Society. In 1965, Potok was awarded a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. His first novel, The Chosen, was written while he was living with his family in Jerusalem. Many more novels would follow.

Potok edited the p'shat commentary of the Rabbinical Assembly's 2000 edition of the Chumash, Etz Hayim.

Potok died of brain cancer in Merion, Pennsylvania, on July 23, 2002.

Literary career

Potok helped to introduce to an American audience the inner world of Jewish culture. His most famous work was his 1967 novel The Chosen, which became a bestseller. The novel treats the tension between traditional Jewish culture and modernism. It was the story of two boys, Reuven Malter, a Modern Orthodox Jew, and Danny Saunders, the brilliant young son of a Hasidic rabbi, who become friends. The father, Reb Saunders, expects his son to succeed him as a rabbi and the leader of their Hasidic sect, yet Danny wants to study psychology, a secular field of study.

The book was made into a film released in 1981, which won the top award at the World Film Festival, Montreal. Potok had a cameo role as a professor. The film starred Rod Steiger, Maximilian Schell and Robby Benson. It also became a short-lived Broadway musical and was subsequently adapted as a stage play by Aaron Posner in collaboration with Potok, which premiered at the Arden Theatre Company in Philadelphia in 1999.

The protagonists of most of his novels are Orthodox American-born Jews, although he wrote about Koreans in his novel I Am The Clay and created other Gentile characters in some of his short stories. Two of the themes that dominate his work are the conflict between father and son and the consequent search for a mentor, and the struggle to bridge the gap between Orthodox Judaism and modernity. Many of his books are coming of age novels, in which the characters try to find a place for themselves that incorporates both religion and the intellectual fruits of secular culture.

Potok's novel My Name is Asher Lev chronicles the conflicts experienced by a young boy from a Hasidic home who has a gift for painting. The sequel, The Gift of Asher Lev, won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction. Davita's Harp and Old Men At Midnight are his only novels with a woman as the main character.

Potok cited James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, and S.Y. Agnon as his chief literary influences. He wrote several plays, as well as numerous short stories, essays and book reviews.

Potok was also part of the translation team for the Jewish Publication Society's translation of the Bible, known as Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text).

Published works

• Jewish Ethics, 1964-69, 14 volumes
• The Chosen, 1967
• The Promise, 1969
• My Name is Asher Lev, 1972
• In the Beginning, 1975
• The Jew Confronts Himself in American Literature, 1975
• Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews, 1978
• The Book of Lights, 1981
• Davita's Harp, 1985
• Theo Tobiasse, 1986
• The Gift of Asher Lev, 1990
• I Am the Clay, 1992
• The Tree of Here, 1993
• The Sky of Now, 1994
• The Gates of November, 1996
• Zebra and Other Stories, 1998
• Isaac Stern: My First 79 Years (with Isaac Stern), 1999
• Old Men at Midnight, 2001
• Conversations with Chaim Potok (edited by Daniel Walden), 2001

See also

• List of notable brain tumor patients

External links

• http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/potok.htm (contains bibliography)
• {{{2}}} at the Open Directory Project
• Notes on The Chosen
• 1985 interview with Chaim Potok by Don Swaim at Wired for Books.
• Biography

Credits

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