(born Feb. 17, 1929, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 23, 2002, Merion, Pa.) U.S. rabbi and novelist.
The son of Polish immigrants, he was reared in an Orthodox Jewish home and was ordained a Conservative rabbi. He taught until he began a career as an editor and writer of scholarly and popular articles and reviews in the 1960s. His novels, which have introduced to American fiction the spiritual and cultural life of Orthodox Jews, include The Chosen (1967; film, 1981), The Promise (1969), and My Name Is Asher Lev (1972). Three connected novellas, Old Men at Midnight, appeared in 2001. Notable among Potok's nonfiction writings are Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews (1978), in which the author combines impressive scholarship with dramatic narrative, and The Gates of November (1996), a chronicle of a Soviet Jewish family and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.
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