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Author Chaim Potok, 73, died Wednesday of cancer in his Merion, Pennsylvania home. Potok was a conservative rabbi and author of nine novels including The Chosen (1967), The Promise (1969),My Name is Asher Lev (1972), Davita's Harp (1985) and The Gift of Asher Lev (1990), for which he was awarded The National Jewish Book Award for Fiction.

His writing is known for its questions of spirituality and meaning. His novels often chronicled tensions between various factions of Judaism and the struggle between Judaism and the secular world.

At Potok's funeral, University of Pennsylvania professor Jeffrey Tigay said the author "opened a window to the Jewish soul for the Jew and non-Jew alike."

In 1978, Christianity Today assistant editor Cheryl Forbes interviewed Potok. This article originally appeared in the September 8, 1978 issue of CT.

Chaim Potok is a small, quick man filled with intellectual intensity. His novels—including The Chosen, The Promise, My Name Is Asher Lev, and In the Beginning—are not just popular; they are well written and deal with the problems of faith in a secular society. Even though the faith Potok writes of is orthodox or Hasidic Judaism, evangelical readers (and there are many) find themselves understanding and empathizing with the conflicts he presents. Evangelicals and Jews both live in what Potok calls a religious subculture, one that holds a firm belief in God, in the supernatural, in miracles, and in a way of living that contradicts everything contemporary society appreciates and approves. And we live under that secular umbrella.

Potok's books do something more. They explain Jewish tradition and religion. As Harold O. J. Brown has said, Jews and Christians are bound together. We need to understand each other. Potok, who was raised a Hasidic Jew and attended a yeshiva (Jewish school), brings us closer to that goal. He recently spoke at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Soon after that, assistant editor Cheryl Forbes interviewed him at his home in Philadelphia.

Some evangelicals who have read your novels have found little theology in them. Do you agree with this?

There is theology in the novels. Some of those presuppositions are in the titles. No one talks about being chosen in The Chosen. The same is true of The Promise. This, by the way, is more or less typical of the Jews, who, until they confronted major cultures, simply never talked about their theological assumptions—or talked about them rarely. Ancient Near Eastern peoples rarely theologized.

But what of the theology in the Old Testament?

Well, there isn't a lot of explicit theology in the Old Testament. Most of the Old Testament is poetry, history, law, narrative, saga, epic, tales, chronology, genealogy, and so on. That's typical of a civilization that lives its doctrine rather than talks about it. You see, theology becomes explicit when antagonistic faiths collide or when creed dominates a civilization. There was no such notion as salvation through creed in the ancient world, as far as I know, unless one turns to some of the mystery religions. Paul invented it. Jewish tradition is a kind of deedology, rather than a creedology.

I'm talking about the concepts of God, providence, miracles, the parting of the Red Sea, the ten commandments. Occasionally you give the content of the prayers in your books. But generally you just say that so-and-so prayed, rather than telling what he prayed.

Well, even if we agreed that all of those Bible passages are theology, we would still find ourselves with a fairly small portion of the Bible.

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July (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46