My Name is Asher Lev

My name is Asher Lev is a coming-of-age book, set in Hasidic Brooklyn in during World War 2. Asher Lev is a boy with an extraordinary artistic talent, but he is slowly becoming ostracized by the community, as his father is angered by Asher Lev's "obsession with profane images." The story follows his struggles and his journey to realize himself, as an artist and as a person.

Author: Chaim Potok

Publisher: Fawcett, 1973

Reviews
Eli Gottlieb- The LA Times

The popular success of Potok's books is not hard to understand. His novels are invariably well-crafted, composed with a feeling for the weights and measures of narrative, and boast a DeMilleian flair for monumental themes. The style, though occasionally cumbersome, has at least the virtue of directness and clarity. In addition, his books are always carefully researched and invariably impart a wealth of learning on his chosen subject.

In his latest novel, "The Gift of Asher Lev," Potok sheds light on the shuttered world of the Hasidim--those bearded and hatted figures seen striding down the streets of New York and certain European cities. The Hasidim are historical fossils of a sort, flash-frozen remnants of a wave of 18th-Century Eastern European reaction to Enlightenment Orthodoxy and rationalism, who substituted a riddling, sensual reading of Scripture for the more formal "scientific" interpretation of their co-religionists. Defiant in their fundamentalism, they come down to the Modern Age best understood as ecstasy-specialists of a sort, the whirling dervishes of Judaism.

Asher Lev is a Hasid, but with a difference. He has become a painter of international stature. In the original best-selling novel, "My Name is Asher Lev," published in 1972, Potok described the precocious awakening of Lev's talent and defined the terms of what would turn out to be his lifelong battle with his father--a devout man who looked with cold fury upon his only son's growing passion for profane images.

Luckily for Lev, his father's opposition to his art was eventually overruled by the supreme spiritual leader of the community, the Rebbe--a mystical personage, equal parts Zeus and Kissinger--who was convinced that it was of the utmost importance that the boy follow the promptings of his temperament, even if they brought him within sinning distance of the sitra acha, the Other Side. The book concluded on the mixed, bittersweet note of a young man tasting his first creative success at the cost of exile from home and community.

 http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-25/entertainment/ca-872_1_asher-lev

Jen Robbins- Bookreporter.com

 At once exquisitely understated and elegantly articulated, Chaim Potok's MY NAME IS ASHER LEV focuses on a man who treads the nebulous boundary between the secular and the spiritual. His protagonist, Asher Lev, is a Ladover Hasid from Brooklyn who is raised in a world saturated with ritual and led by a charismatic Rebbe. Asher keeps kosher, attends yeshiva and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. But he's also an artist who's driven to render the world in all the raw beauty and power he sees in it. The inevitable friction this causes between Asher and his deeply religious community both inspires and impedes his artistic evolution.

 As Asher enters religious school, the Rebbe acknowledges that his  gift can't be denied and introduces him to Jacob Kahn, a renowned  Jewish artist who was a contemporary of Picasso. Kahn, a  non-observant Jew, takes Asher under his wing and mentors him,  encouraging him to express himself even when it leads Asher to  blasphemy.

A major focus of the novel is the tension between Asher and his  deeply religious parents, particularly his father Aryeh. Although everyone in Asher's life recognizes his immense talent at a young age, his father steadfastly refuses to accept it, asking his son when he'll give up that "foolishness." Aryeh Lev is an almost larger-than-life figure in their Brooklyn Hasidic community, working closely with the Rebbe and traveling often. He does God's work, passionately dedicated to helping persecuted Jews start a new life in America and setting up Ladover yeshivas throughout Europe. The juxtaposition of his father's sacrifice for the Jewish people and Asher's own reluctance to assume such a responsibility is a particularly painful one for both of them.

His compulsion to paint not only alienates Asher from his childhood world, but also causes divisions between members of his own family when an uncle offers his attic for a studio space. One especially poignant scene comes when Asher is already a household name and his parents finally make it to one of his shows. They walk out in disgust at paintings that incorporate Christian iconography, works they consider deeply antagonistic to their faith.

As the novel traces Asher's struggle to express himself while remaining entrenched in the Hasidic community, Potok paints a luminous portrait of the artist's sometimes tortured existence without lapsing into cliché. His characters are deftly drawn --- as Asher grows into an adult, you acutely feel the crushing weight of his responsibility to the Jewish people versus a responsibility to his gift. The trouble Asher causes weighs heavily on his mind, yet he's powerless to stop himself. In one telling segment, he inadvertently draws a face on his Chumash, a Jewish holy book, much to the horror of his surrounding classmates. To the wise Rebbe, however, this only signifies that Asher possesses a gift that cannot be disavowed.

Those not schooled in Jewish tradition will encounter many unfamiliar terms, but they're couched in context, so Potok's attention to detail serves to breathe life into the text, not confuse the reader. The end result is a novel that deals with sweeping themes --- the nature of art, religion and family bonds --- with elegance and grace.

 http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/my-name-is-asher-lev

Activities
Here are some fun activities after reading My Name is Asher Lev.

http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/my-name-is-asher-lev/funactivities.html#gsc.tab=0

Other Links
Author's website: http://potok.lasierra.edu/Potok.biographical.html

Theatrical rendition trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFY_VCpF5r0