Chaim Potok Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok, rabbi and critical scholar of Judaic texts, has demonstrated in his literary career that the American novel is indeed a viable genre for writing about Jewish theology, liturgy, history, and scholarship. He has brought to American fiction a feeling for biblical exegesis, Talmudic study, and the mystical writings of the Cabala and Zohar. Born 17 February 1929 in New York to Polish Jewish immigrants Mollie Friedman and Benjamin Max Potok, the novelist spent his formative years in a traditional Jewish home and parochial schools. A transformative experience of early adolescence, reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (1945), provided major direction for his creative work. Potok recognized in Waugh's writing the capacity of literature to transport readers into cultural environments foreign from their own and determined that fiction would be his vehicle to present Jewish civilization in American literature. With that end in mind, he undertook a rigorous religious and secular education at Yeshiva University, where he earned a B.A.

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