Chaim Potok's Brooklyn Novels

About Chaim Potok

Chaim Potok (1929–2002) was an American rabbi and novelist whose fiction explored the conflict between Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish tradition and the secular modern world. The Chosen (1967), his debut novel, became an unexpected bestseller — the first major American novel to depict the Hasidic world with sympathy and precision. The Promise (1969) is the direct sequel; My Name Is Asher Lev (1972), his most acclaimed later novel, follows a Hasidic prodigy whose artistic gift puts him in conflict with his community. Potok's fiction is set primarily in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg during and after the Second World War, in the community of Lubavitcher Hasidim that he grew up near and studied intimately.