He then taught at several Jewish colleges, including the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, before moving on to become the managing editor of Conservative Judaism in 1964. Potok served as combat chaplain with the United States Army in Korea from 1955 to 1957. He attended Yeshiva University and graduated summa cum laude in English literature in 1950 before moving on to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained a Conservative rabbi. Over a period of five years, he spent most of his free time reading the novels of great writers.Īt the same time, he became fascinated by less restrictive Jewish doctrines, particularly the Conservative movement. Riveted by the world of upper-class British Catholics that Waugh brings to life in the novel, Potok realized for the first time that fiction had the power "to create worlds out of words on paper." To learn how to write, Potok carefully studied the novels of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain. In an interview Potok said, "I prayed in a little shtiebel, and my mother is a descendant of a great Hasidic dynasty and my father was a Hasid, so I come from that world."Īfter reading Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited when he was a teenager, Potok decided to become a writer. Chaim Potok, born Herman Harold Potok, February 17, 1929, in Brooklyn, NY, was the son of Polish immigrants who had strong ties to Hasidism and was reared in an Orthodox Jewish home.
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