Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok's literary aspirations weren't always encouraged. Teachers at his Jewish parochial school were cool to the idea and his mother wasn't thrilled at a son who wanted to be a writer. "You want to write stories, darling?'' he once recalled her telling him. "That's very nice. You'll be a brain surgeon. On the side you'll write stories.'' Even so, stories turned out to be Potok's main occupation. After becoming a rabbi, he wrote "The Chosen'' and other best-selling novels that explored the conflict between Jewish religious and secular life. Potok died Tuesday of brain cancer at his suburban Merion home, said his wife, Adena. He was 73. Chaim Potok's Orthodox upbringing and religious training influenced his novels and other work. "He created an American stream that really didn't exist before. He wrote directly from the interior of the Jewish theological experience, rather than from the social experience. And they were best sellers,'' the novelist Cynthia Ozick told The Associated Press. "The Chosen,'' published in 1967 and Potok's first and best-known novel, follows the friendship between two Jewish boys from different religious backgrounds. It was made into a movie in 1982 starring Robby Benson as the young man from Brooklyn who breaks out of the Hassidic world through his interest in psychology. It also was made into an off-Broadway play. Potok, who counted James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh and Ernest Hemingway among the authors who most inspired him, recalled that teachers at his Jewish parochial school were displeased with his taking time away from studying the Talmud by reading literature. "I knew that I would be a writer, that I would write from within the tradition. And that meant that I had to know the tradition from inside out. And that I needed to know the tradition without being blinded by it,'' Potok told The Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year. Some critics praised Potok's novels as subtle and profound looks at Jewish culture, yet others found his prose simplistic and his plots underdeveloped. However, his storytelling was popular among readers of many faiths. "The Chosen'' earned the Edward Lewis Wallant Award and its sequel published in 1969, "The Promise,'' won the Athenaeum Prize. His 1972 novel, "My Name Is Asher Lev,'' explored the conflicts faced by an Orthodox Jew who becomes a painter. Potok also wrote plays, children's literature, nonfiction, and short stories. In 1999, he received an O. Henry Award for the short story "Moon.'' After five novels, Potok researched and wrote his first nonfiction book, "Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews,'' which traced Jewish history to the patriarch Abraham 4,000 years ago. Potok also assisted the late violinist Isaac Stern with his autobiography, "My First Seventy-nine Years.'' He was born in New York City, the eldest son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Raised in the Orthodox tradition, Potok embraced Conservative Judaism as a young adult and was eventually ordained a Conservative rabbi in 1954. Potok graduated from Yeshiva University in 1950 with a degree in English, then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary and was ordained a rabbi four years later. He served as an Army chaplain during the Korean War and in 1959 enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1965. He also was editor in chief of the Jewish Publication Society of America, where he later became special projects editor, and taught at Penn, Bryn Mawr College and Johns Hopkins University. In addition to his wife of 44 years, survivors include daughters Rena and Naama, and son Akiva. ___ Associated Press Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this story from New York.