27 Facts About Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok was an American author, novelist, playwright, editor and rabbi.

Herman Harold Potok was born in the Bronx, New York City, to Benjamin Max Potok and Mollie, Jewish immigrants from Poland.

Chaim Potok was the oldest of four children, all of whom either became or married rabbis.

Chaim Potok started writing fiction at the age of 16.

Chaim Potok attended high school at Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, Yeshiva University's boys high school.

In 1949, at the age of twenty, Chaim Potok's stories were published in the literary magazine of Yeshiva University, which he helped edit.

Chaim Potok was appointed director of the Leaders Training Fellowship, a youth organization affiliated with Conservative Judaism.

Chaim Potok served in South Korea from 1955 to 1957.

Chaim Potok described his time in South Korea as a transformative experience.

Chaim Potok met Adena Sara Mosevitzsky, a psychiatric social worker, at Camp Ramah in Ojai, California, where he served as camp director from 1957 to 1959.

In 1964, the Potoks moved to Brooklyn, where Chaim became the managing editor of the magazine Conservative Judaism and joined the faculty of the Teachers' Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Chaim Potok died at his home in Merion, Pennsylvania on July 23,2002, aged 73.

In 1967, Chaim Potok published The Chosen, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and was nominated for the National Book Award.

Chaim Potok wrote a sequel to The Chosen in 1969, entitled The Promise, which details the issues of the value and identity between Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.

From 1974 until his death, Chaim Potok served as a special projects editor for the Jewish Publication Society.

Between 1978 and 1989, Chaim Potok contributed articles to Moment Magazine.

Chaim Potok described his 1981 novel The Book of Lights as an account of his experiences in Asia during the war.

Chaim Potok wrote many plays, among them Sins of the Father and Out of the Depths.

In 1992, Chaim Potok completed another novel, I Am the Clay, about the courageous struggle of a war-ravaged family.

Chaim Potok's parents discouraged his writing and reading of non-Jewish subjects.

Chaim Potok went into writing and painted in his free time.

Chaim Potok said he related to Asher Lev more than any of his other characters.

Chaim Potok has had a considerable influence on Jewish American authors.

Chaim Potok's work was significant for discussing the conflict between the traditional aspects of Jewish thought and culture and modernity to a wider, non-Jewish culture.

Chaim Potok taught a highly regarded graduate seminar on Postmodernism at the University of Pennsylvania from 1993 through 2001.

Chaim Potok bequeathed his papers to the University of Pennsylvania.

One of his admirers was Elie Wiesel, who wrote to Chaim Potok saying he had read all his books "with fervor and friendship".