Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Potok, Chaim (Vol. 112) - S. Lillian Kremer (essay date 1989)

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S. Lillian Kremer (essay date 1989)

SOURCE: "Eternal Light: The Holocaust and the Revival of Judaism and Jewish Civilization in the Fiction of Chaim Potok," in Witness through Imagination: Jewish American Holocaust Literature, Wayne State University Press, 1989, pp. 300-23.

[In the following essay, Kremer explores themes and issues surrounding anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in Potok's fiction. According to Kremer, rather than "focus on the atrocities of the Holocaust period and burden of Holocaust survival, Potok generally concentrates on the possibilities of Holocaust restoration."]

Chaim Potok is a rabbi, scholar, and novelist whose philosophic and ethical views are derived from Torah and Talmud and whose aesthetic theory is derived from Western philosophy, literature, and art. With Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, Arthur Cohen, and I. B. Singer, Potok rejects alienation in favor of the affirmative position of Jewish...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Granville Hicks (review date 29 April 1967)
   2. Edmund Fuller (review date 15 May 1967)
   3. Sandra Schmidt (review date 20 July 1967)
   4. Times Literary Supplement (review date 31 August 1967)
   5. Richard Freedman (review date 14 September 1969)
   6. Dorothy Rabinowitz (review date May 1970)
   7. Washington Post Book World (review date 3 December 1978)
   8. J. D. Reed (review date 19 October 1981)
   9. John H. Timmerman (essay date 16 May 1984)
   10. Time (review date 25 March 1985)
   11. Paul Cowan (review date 31 March 1985)
   12. Cynthia Grenier (review date 29 April 1985)
   13. Susan Reed (review date 6 May 1985)
   14. Edward A. Abramson (essay date 1986)
   15. S. Lillian Kremer (essay date 1989)
   16. Andy Solomon (review date 6 May 1990)
   17. Nikki Stiller (review date 13 May 1990)
   18. Brian Morton (review date 2 November 1990)
   19. Irving Abrahamson (review date 17 May 1992)
   20. Bryan Cheyette (review date 27 November 1992)
   21. Felicity Barringer (review date 1 December 1996)
   22. David M. Shribman (review date 12 December 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright