Potok chaim biography samples

There is a wrenchingly powerful passage in Chaim Potok’s The Promise, in which an elderly Rabbi, a great Talmudist who has survived the Holocaust in Eastern europe and komma to the USA, sees in the New York Times reports of the death sentences being upheld against the Rosenbergs. His voice shakes with terror, sure that pogroms must surely follow. He fryst vatten almost incapable of comprehending the answers of his young American Jewish lärling, who tries to reassure him that he fryst vatten living in a different world now. It’s a heartbreaking scene.
I was told this morning that Melbourne, where I’m writing this, has the largest population of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel, greater than that of New York or London. This makes it an even more poignant place to read Potok’s account.
inom love Chaim Potok’s accounts of Orthodox Jewish life in Brooklyn. I love the exquisite detail with which he renders daglig life in a community which fryst vatten at once terrifically insular and yet incred

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Chaim Potok

Introduction

Daniel Walden

Chaim Potok was a world-class writer and scholar, a Conservative Jew who wrote from and about his tradition and the conflicts between observance and acculturation. With a plain, straightforward style, his novels were set against the moral, spiritual, and intellectual currents of the twentieth century. His characters thought about modernity and wrestled with the core-to-core cultural confrontations they experienced when modernity clashed with faith. Potok was able to communicate with millions of people of many religious beliefs all over the world, because, unlike his major predecessors, he wrote from the inside, inclusively.

Beginning with The Chosen and continuing through The Promise, My Name Is Asher Lev, The Gift of Asher Lev, The Book of Lights, and Davita’s Harp, Potok wrote very American novels. They were understandable and attractive to one and all. As Sheldon Grebstein put it, referring to The Chosen, a runaway

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Potok, Chaim 1929–2002

PERSONAL: Born Herman Harold Potok, February 17, 1929, in New York, NY; died of brain cancer, July 23, 2002, in Merion, PA; changed given name to Chaim, pronounced "Hah-yim"; son of Benjamin Max (in business) and Mollie (Friedman) Potok; married Adena Sarah Mosevitzky, June 8, 1958; children: Rena, Naama, Akiva. Education:Yeshiva University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1950; Jewish Theological Seminary, M.H. L., 1954; University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D., 1965. Hobbies and other interests: Oil painting, photography.

CAREER: Writer. Ordained rabbi (Conservative). Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY, national director, Leaders Training Fellowship, 1954–55; Camp Ramah, Ojai, CA, director, 1957–59; University of Judaism, Los Angeles, CA, instructor, 1957–59; Har Zion Temple, Philadelphia, PA, scholar-in-residence, 1959–63; Jewish Theological Seminary, member of faculty of Teachers' Institute, 1963–64; Conservative Judaism, New York, NY, managing edit