Books by Chaim Potok • The Chosen (1967) • The Promise (1969) • My Name is Asher Lev (1972) • In the Beginning (1975) • Davita's Harp (1985)

Chaim Potok, known for his novels set in the Orthodox Jewish communities of Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York, died on July 23, 2002 at his home in Merion, Pennsylvania. Potok had been diagnosed with cancer in 2000.

Potok was born Herman Harold Potok in the Bronx, New York, in 1929, the eldest son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. As was traditional, his parents also gave him a Hebrew name, Chaim Tvzi. Raised in the Orthodox community, Potok studied Jewish culture, history and, of course, the Talmud, first at local Jewish primary schools and later at the Talmudic Academy High School of Yeshiva Univeristy.. His youth was spent reading the novels of famous authors such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Thomas Mann and Evelyn Waugh. He earned an M.A. in Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

In 1954, at the age of 25, he was ordained a Conservative rabbi. In the 1950s, Potok served as a chaplain with the US Army in Korea.  He then taught at the University of Judaism in Bel-Air, California.  In 1958, he married Adena Sarah Mosevitzsky.

Following the birth of Potok's first child in 1962, Potok moved to Israel where he spent a year studying and teaching. He returned to the United States and assumed the role of managing editor of the magazine "Conservative Judaism." The family settled in suburban Philadelphia where Potok worked as editor-in-chief of the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia. 

In 1965, Potok received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1980s he served as a visiting professor at both the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr College.

Despite his impressive religious and academic background, Chaim Potok will be best remembered as the author of numerous novels which centered around the Jewish experience in America and particularly the challenges facing those of the Orthodox and Hasidic faiths in trying to co-exist with each other and with non-Jews in a predominantly Christian society. His best known works are the two novels, "The Chosen" (1967) and "The Promise" (1969). The books follow the stories of two young Jewish boys, one secular and one from a Hasidic family, who become friends and often rivals.

Potok's other novels include "My Name is Asher Lev" (1972) and "Davita's Harp" (1985).

In addition to his novels, Potok was the author of several works of non-fiction including Chaim Potok's History of the Jews (1978). He also wrote plays, children's books and short stories.

Potok is survived by his wife and daughters Rena and Naama and son Akiva.

Selected Novels by Chaim Potok

The Chosen (1967)
Potok's most well known novel is the story of two boys - one a secular Jew, the other Hasidic - who become friends, and often rivals as they grow to manhood in the turbulent years of the 1940s in New York.

The Promise (1969)
In this sequel to "The Chosen," boyhood friends Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders grow into manhood as they battle the prejudices from both inside and outside their faith.

My Name is Asher Lev (1972)
Considered by many to be Potok's finest work, this novel tells the story of a young man who is overwhelmed by his need to paint for all of the world to see the expressions of his feelings and pain - which is strictly prohibited  by the edicts of his Orthodox Jewish faith.

In the Beginning (1975)
Potok's story of a young Jewish boy who must battle his own poor health and young thugs in Depression-era Bronx and find his own way, to the disappointment of his father.

Davita's Harp (1985)
Set in the 1930s through the 1950s in New York, this book tells the story of a young girl, born of a Jewish mother and gentile father, both radicals, and neither of whom have much in the way of faith. As she grows through the war years and the era of McCarthyism, she comes to find peace in the long abandoned faith of her mother.