Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok was an American Jewish author and rabbi, best known for his exploration of the complexities of religious identity and the conflicts faced by individuals within Jewish culture. Born in the Bronx to a family of ultra-Orthodox Hasidim, Potok showed an early interest in the arts, particularly writing, which he pursued after being discouraged from painting due to religious customs. He was educated in Jewish religious schools and later graduated from Yeshiva University, where he studied Judaism and English literature. Potok became a rabbi in 1954 but did not serve in a traditional congregational role; instead, he worked as a U.S. Army chaplain in Korea, which profoundly shaped his worldview.
His breakthrough novel, "The Chosen," published in 1967, examines the struggles of young men in Orthodox communities amid secular America. Potok's works often address the tension between religious beliefs and modern society, appealing to a wide audience by reflecting the broader human experience of cultural clashes. Over his career, he published several acclaimed novels, children's books, and scholarly works, and he served as editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society. Potok's literary contributions are significant for portraying the lives of religious Jews, particularly in contrast to other Jewish writers who depicted more assimilated experiences. His narratives not only captivated readers but also sparked discussions on moral responsibility and the intersection of faith and art.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Chaim Potok
Novelist and scholar
- Born: February 17, 1929
- Birthplace: Bronx, New York
- Died: July 23, 2002
- Place of death: Merion, Pennsylvania
A scholar who grew up in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in New York, Potok is best known for his novels, such as The Chosen (1967). In it he depicts the conflicts and moral dilemmas faced by those who belong to the Hasidic community and who wish to take part in secular American society.
Early Life
Chaim Potok (KI-ihm POH-tahk) was born in a Jewish area in the Bronx to Benjamin Max Potok and Mollie Friedman. Chaim Potok’s family belonged to the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic branch of Judaism, although the young Potok did not wear the traditional dark clothes and long sidelocks of the Hasidim. He attended religious Jewish schools, however, including the Talmudic Academy High School and Yeshiva University in New York, from which he graduated in 1950 after studying both Judaism and English literature.
From an early age Potok was interested in the arts. Around the age of nine he took up painting, but his father, who at first tolerated this pursuit, eventually told him to give it up because it violated Jewish customs. As a result, Potok shifted to writing, which was somewhat more acceptable to his devout family. When he was a teenager he discovered the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh. Potok found this story of an aristocratic Catholic family revelatory both for the way a novel could transport him into another world and for its exploration of the clash between a religious subculture (Catholicism) and a mainstream secular culture. He found something similar when he read James Joyce’s coming-of-age novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914), a few years later, and he decided he wanted to write novels about the clash between Judaism and secular culture.
To learn more about Judaism Potok attended the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was ordained as a rabbi in 1954. However, his intention was not to serve as a rabbi in a synagogue, and he never had a congregation, though he did serve as a U.S. Army chaplain in South Korea in the aftermath of the Korean War, from 1955 through 1957. He later said his time in Korea changed him greatly, for it made him realize that half the world had never heard of Judaism and there was no anti-Semitism there.
On his return to the United States, Potok taught Jewish studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and then began studying for a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, which he completed in 1965, in part while living in Israel. During this period, he also worked for the journal Conservative Judaism, having earlier shifted his religious affiliation from Orthodox Judaism to the more moderate Conservative movement.
Life’s Work
Although he received an encouraging rejection letter when he submitted a short story to The Atlantic Monthly at the age of seventeen, Potok did not publish any fiction, except in the school yearbook at Yeshiva University, until the mid-1960’s, when he was more than thirty years old. In the late 1950’s, he wrote a novel about his experiences in Korea, but it did not find a publisher. He finally published some short stories in 1964 and 1966, and then suddenly he became a success with his first published novel, The Chosen, in 1967, on which he had been working for seven years.
Over the next twenty-five years Potok published another seven novels, most of them exploring the same situation he presented in The Chosen: the challenge of being a religious Jew in secular America. In his early novels, such as The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev (1972), Potok typically presented coming-of-age narratives about the moral dilemmas facing young men in Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. In 1985, in Davita’s Harp, he varied this approach to present the trials of a young woman raised by nonreligious, communist parents. In 1992, Potok drew on his experiences in Korea to depict the struggle for survival of a Korean peasant family in I Am the Clay.
At the same time that he was writing fiction, Potok pursued a scholarly career, working for the Jewish Publication Society, eventually becoming its editor in chief and assisting in its new translation of the Hebrew Bible. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and other universities, and in 1978 he published Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews, a popular history but one based on serious scholarly work. It focused on the recurring theme in his fictional works, that of the clash between Judaism and other cultures.
In his last years he wrote books for children, including The Tree of Here (1993) and The Sky of Now (1995), and a nonfictional account of a Jewish family in the Soviet Union, The Gates of November (1996). He also tried his hand at playwrighting and cowrote the autobiography of the violinist Isaac Stern. He published a collection of three novellas under the title Old Men at Midnight (2001), which some saw as among his darkest works. He won a number of awards, including the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for The Chosen, which was also nominated for a National Book Award and which was made into a film starring Rod Steiger in 1981. In the mid-1970’s, he moved with his family—his wife Adena and their three children—to Israel, where they lived for four years. They returned to the United States and settled in Merion, a suburb of Philadelphia, where Potok lived until 2002, when he died of cancer.
Significance
Potok is often contrasted with Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, writers who focused on describing assimilated, secular Jews in their fiction. In contrast, Potok described the world of religious Jews, especially the world of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim. He is also notable for exploring the conflict between that world and the secular world, or, more precisely, the conflict within the religious Jewish community over how to deal with the secular world: to pursue isolation or engagement.
Potok’s books were huge best sellers, in part because of the appeal of the exotic world he described and in part because the dynamics of the clash between a religious subculture and the larger secular culture surrounding it struck a chord with those in other subcultures. Potok is notable for writing novels of ideas, focusing on such important issues as the moral responsibility of scientists, anti-Semitism, and the demands of religion and of art.
Bibliography
Abramson, Edward A. Chaim Potok. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Includes detailed, sophisticated analyses of Potok’s early novels, a chronology (up to 1985), and an annotated bibliography.
McClymond, Kathryn. “The Chosen: Defining American Judaism.” Shofar 25, no. 2 (2007): 4-23. Distinguishes Potok from Roth and Bellow. Notes how Potok depicts divisions within Judaism and shows the Jewish religious community as being part of American life.
Sternlicht, Sanford. Chaim Potok: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. Includes a biographical sketch and a detailed analysis of each of Potok’s novels (although the analysis is not sophisticated). Contains useful background information and a bibliography.
Walden, Daniel, ed. Conversations with Chaim Potok. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. A collection of interviews in which Potok talks about his writing, religion, Jewish history, and his life. Includes a chronology (up to 2000).
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. “The World of Chaim Potok.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 4 (1985). A collection of essays on various aspects of Potok and his work.