Davita's Harp

Herman Harold Potok was born in the Bronx on the 17th of February in the year of 1929 (McCauley, 1E). It was later on in his life when he started using his Hebrew name, Chaim (McCauley, 1E). As a teenager, Chaim was drawn to the Conservative branch of Judaism, which caused problems in his family because both of his parents raised the family in Orthodox tradition (McCauley, 1E). All these problems in his life eventually inspired him to write one of his greatest books of all time, My Name is Asher Lev, in 1972 (McCauley, 1E). According to Chaim Potok, arts were seen as a distraction to the true purpose of Orthodox Jews. Their main purpose is to study the Torad and Talmud (McCauley, 1E). He went on to some religious and secular schools (Kremer, 202). He earned his B.A. summa cum laude in English literature from Yeshiva University in 1950 (Kremer, 202). He then went on to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he earned his M.H.L. degree, rabbinic ordination, the Homiletics Prize, the Hebrew Literature Prize, and the Bible prize in 1954 (Allen). And lastly in 1965, he received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania (Allen).
Chaim Potok was also a professor at Penn, Bryn Mawr, and at John Hopkins University from 1995 to 1998 (McCauley, 1E). And although Chaim Potok enjoyed teaching, his true passion was what he did best-writing novels. Over 34 years of his life, he wrote fourteen novels, four plays, and a few children’s books (McCauley, 1E). A novelist, Cynthia Ozick, stated “Chaim Potok wrote directly from the interior of the Jewish theological experience, rather than from the social experience. And they were best sellers.” Chaim Potok was a great universal writer who appealed to everyone. He lived in Pennsylvania with his wife of 44 years, Adena, and his three children, Rena, Naama, and Akiva until his passing on July 23, 2002 at the age of 73 due to brain cancer (Allen).
One of Chaim Potok’s best sellers was his novel,