Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok was an American author and rabbi whose novels brought the inner life of Orthodox and Conservative Jewish communities in twentieth-century New York to a mainstream readership. He was born Herman Harold Potok on February 17, 1929, in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants Benjamin Max Potok and Mollie Friedman. Raised in a Hasidic household, he adopted the Hebrew name Chaim from childhood and grew up steeped in Talmudic study and yeshiva schooling.

He earned a bachelor's degree in English literature, summa cum laude, from Yeshiva University in 1950, then enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained as a Conservative rabbi in 1954. He served as a U.S. Army chaplain in South Korea from 1955 to 1957, an experience that loosened the boundaries of the Jewish world he had known. He later completed a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in 1965.

His debut novel The Chosen, published in 1967, depicts the friendship between two Brooklyn Jewish boys from rival traditions and became a bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Award, and the basis for a 1981 film. Its sequel The Promise appeared in 1969 and won the Athenaeum Award.

He continued to explore conflicts between religious tradition and secular culture in My Name Is Asher Lev (1972), In the Beginning (1975), The Book of Lights (1981), and Davita's Harp (1985). He also wrote the historical study Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews (1978) and served as editor at the Jewish Publication Society. He died of brain cancer on July 23, 2002, at his home in Merion, Pennsylvania, aged 73.

The name Chaim is a Hebrew masculine given name meaning "life," derived from the plural noun chayyim. It is traditionally bestowed as an expression of blessing, and he carried it throughout his rabbinic and literary life.