Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe SAN DIEGO, July 24 (UPI) -- Asher Lev is dead. Sorry, I meant Chaim Potok, but it really boils down to the same thing in the end. Advertisement Rabbi Potok died of cancer, on July 23, at the age of 73. He was best known as a writer, but he was also a painter, a philosopher and an army chaplain during the Korean War. He was born in New York, in a deeply religious Jewish family. In fact, he turned to writing because his painting caused his father such distress. In an interview, he once said that his father considered painting a "gentile" occupation, and that writing was much more of a Jewish occupation. It is ironic that the two authors who inspired him to start writing were both Christians: Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce. Advertisement Potok wrote of what he knew best, Jewish-Americans in the 20th century struggling with two contradictory yet valid points of view. Being both religious and secular, like Danny Saunders in "The Chosen," Potok found inherently valid and conflicting ideas in religion and Freudian psychoanalysis. Potok was interested in how people cope with clashing values, beliefs and ideas. He once said that the real challenge, for the future, would be to make sure that we would still have thinking moral human beings in a supremely technological world. Potok also wrote two children's books: "The Tree of Here," dealing with an 8-year-old's fear of moving, and "The Sky of Now," dealing with a boy's fear of heights. Leaving a house where you have lived is a deeply emotional and upsetting experience, even for adults, and Potok believed that one had to deal with children's fears, and explore and explain them. Although best-known for "The Chosen," and "My Name Is Asher Lev," my favorite is "Davita's Harp," a novel that revolves around a young girl living in New York in the '30s and '40s. Davita is raised by a Christian father and a non-practicing Jewish mother, both engaged in communism, but when her father is killed in the Spanish Civil War, Davita turns to Judaism for solace. She reads Kaddish for him, although women are not supposed to do so. Advertisement "My teacher, a kindly bearded man in his middle forties, had asked me to remain behind as the class trooped out for the morning recess. When we were alone, he said, 'Ilana, a girl does not say Kaddish.' I did not respond. 'I was told you say Kaddish in shul. I cannot do anything about that. But you will not say it in class.'" She continues to say Kaddish, and people respond appropriately, even if they do not approve. The novel explores the gender issues in the Jewish Orthodox community, and Davita (like the author's wife) is denied the prize for best pupil because she is a girl. "It would look bad for the school if we announced to the world that a girl is the best student in our graduating class. It would not be good for the name of the school, for its reputation." Although Davita's world was very different from mine, I still strongly empathized and sympathized with her, a measure of the genius of the author. His work will ensure that he is not forgotten. (Chaim Potok's books are all available at Random House.) "The Chosen" "The Promise" "My Name Is Asher Lev" "In the Beginning" Advertisement "Wanderings" "The Book of Lights" "Davita's Harp" "The Gift of Asher Lev" "I Am the Clay" "The Gates of November" "Old Men at Midnight"
