Just heard on NPR that Chaim Potek died today - what a wondrful man and a wonderful writer, you opened the way to dialogue between Jews and Christians.
Back in 1977 I had a class in seminary team taught by one of my Lutheran professors and a rabbi, current issues in Jewish-Christian dialogue. I chose as my topic Potek's dialogue with the goyim world - a topic my Lutheran professor abhorred but the Rabbi loved - and thank you Rabbi Pearlman for the A! Potek not only opened the separate worlds of the same faith to each other, he also trasmitted the greatest insights of the Hasidic, including those from the great scholar Abraham Heschel, and showed how faith lives, not how faith is a series of intellectual agreements or a code of ethics or a way of life, but how true faith lives, and the joy that is found theein. Perhaps his greatest work was The Gift of Asher Lev - the Chosen and the promise were probably better known. In the Beginning and The Book of Lights are just pure masterpieces. (I must admit to not liking Davida's Harp allo that much.) And that Potek did everything he did in the foirm of a stiry teller - this is not hard literature that hurts to read, but the warm and loving narrative of a great story teller who knows how to convey Truth and Life in the way the story is told. If anyone need still needs something to rwad this summer, get home Chaim Potek's books. Whenever I have moved, Potek's books have always been packed first. One last Potek story for now: in around 1984 a good friend of mine, Ricky, a wayward member of his faith community, was having the local Hasidic rabbi over for dinner - the Rabbi Weinsten was going to strrongly suggest Ricky return to his faith, and not as a Conservative or Reform, but as a Hasid. Ricky, who could never pass up an opportunity for mixing things up, invited me over too as a surprise for the Rabbi. Hasidic rabbis do not mix much with Christian ministers, sort of for the same reason that the Amish stay within their faith community too. The Rabbi arched an eyebrow at me and said, "I am Hasidic." I - since I always read my Potek - knew enough to say, "Oh, Lubavitch or other?" The Rabbi put doewn his wine glass, looked at me, and said, "Most Christians do not know about that." I sai,d, "this one does" and away we went, a delightful evening of sharing and conversation unlike any other that I have ever had. I don't remember what we exactly talked about, but I do remember what a vibrant, happy faith he had. He was a lot surer of his convictions than I am of mine - the world was easier for him to categorize that it is for me - but the insights of two staunch believers that God mattered, and that God was about having life, we were in total agreement there and it was so refreshing. And though he looked at the world in a simpler manner than me, his insights were far more complex. But I was prepared for that by having read Potek - he perhaps more than any other author told me that there is so much validity in the variety of ways we may understand things, that the only intelliegent - and real - response to differences is to dialogue, understand, find where it makes most sense for you, and extend all validity to all others, no matter how much they may see things differently, because there is a validness in diversity that we do not understand in our own narrowness... seek to understand, and insight is there. God bless you Chaim Potek. Thank you for being. To life! Vince
