Chaim Potok

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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.

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[edit] 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 Orthodox Jewish education. After reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited as a teenager he decided to become a writer.

In 1950, Potok graduated fromYeshiva 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, 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 being a transformative experience. 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. from the University of Pennsylvania. His first novel, The Chosen, was written while he was living with his family in Jerusalem.[1] 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.[2]

[edit] Literary career

Potok is most famous for his 1967 novel The Chosen, which became a bestseller. 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.

[edit] Published works

[edit] References

  1. ^ Chaim Potok - Telegraph
  2. ^ Chaim Potok

[edit] See also

[edit] External links