Herman Harold Potok or also better known by his Hebrew name, Chaim Potok was an Jewish American writer and rabbi born in February 19, 1929 in the Bronx, New York and he died at the age of 73 in July 23, 2002 in Merion, Pennsylvania of brain cancer.
Born as the eldest son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. By tradition from the Jew people, his parents gave him also a Hebrew name, Chaim Tvzi (Chaim means life or alive). His father, Benjamin Max Potok, died in 1958, was a jeweler and watchmaker. During his child years, he went to Jewish schools for primary education. He was raised Orthodox. This has been a key inspiration for several of his works, which all started in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Creative exposure such as drawing and painting were considered in the Orthodox community a violation of the Second Commandment and a waste of money and time. Instead, Potok focused on writing. Potok read works from James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, and Evelyn Waugh, whose novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) left him a deeply impression. He also went to the Talmudic Academy High School of Yeshiva University in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Potok also got a Master of Arts degree in Hebrew literature. When he had the age of 25 he was ordained to a rabbi. From 1955 till 1957 he went with U.S. Army during the Korean War to be a chaplain for Jewish soldiers who are also went to Korea. He served more than fifteen months in the U.S. Army with a medical battalion and an engineering combat battalion. The experience during this period is used as an inspiration for Potok's works such as The Book of Lights (1981) and I am the Clay (1992). Between the years 1957 and 1959 Potok taught at the University of Judaism. During that period, in 1958 he married Adena Sarah Mosevitzsky, a social worker. He also got a daughter , Rosa, born in 1962. In 1963 he took his to Israel for a year.
Chaim Potok became the managing editor of the magazine Conservative Judaism in 1964. A year later he was appointed to be editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia and then became the chairman of its publication committee. From 1974 he worked as a special projects editor. He also received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1965 from the University in Pennsylvania.
He also was visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Chaim Potok died on July 23, in Merion, Pennsylvania. He had been ill with cancer for some time.
Literary movement
Chaim Potok has no articles on the internet about his works and his literary movement. I would say the New York School because most of his works are set in the Bronx, New York or Brooklyn, New York and especially about the Jewish communities. For example, The Chosen (1967) is about the friendship of two young, Jewish boys who are growing up in 1940's Brooklyn, New York. The book I read, I am the Clay (1992), is more a work for the literary movement Magical Realism. This because the old man in the story keeps telling that the boy possesses some 'magic' and that the boy always save them miraculously.
Works of Chaim Potok
He totally published eighteen works from 1964 till 2001. The work where he is most known must be The Chosen (1967), also his debut as a writer. The Chosen immediately became a bestseller and his sequel The Promise (1969) is a famous work of Potok. The Chosen also is adapted to a film and a Broadway Musical. You can see below a list of his works.
Jewish Ethics (14 volumes)
1964-69
Theo Tobiasse
1986
The Chosen
1967
The Gift of Asher Lev
1990
The Promise
1969
I Am the Clay
1992
My Name is Asher Lev
1972
The Tree of Here
1993
In the Beginning
1975
The Sky of Now
1994
The Jew Confronts Himself in American Literature
1975
The Gates of November
1996
Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews
1978
Zebra and Other Stories
1998
The Book of Lights
1981
Isaac Stern: My First 79 Years
1999
Davita's Harp
1985
Old Men at Midnight
2001
