My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of My Name Is Asher Lev
Book Review: Inspiring for all ages
Summary: 5 Stars
As apart of my High School English class, I was assigned to read My Name Is Asher Lev. I really didn't feel like reading any books about some kid who has problems with how the way he draws and how it affects him. Reading about this Jewish kid growing up in Brooklyn, going through his life with the need to draw things around, well that really didn't seem appealing to me.However getting more into the book I realize there is a whole other world out there than my own. Within my community it isn't so tight as to Asher's where everyone seems to know what is going on in everyone else's life. I have never read a book where I believe that it can reach out to anyone. Having someone else with a whole other life tell his story, about his family, his troubles, that is something different for me. I believe that maybe there is a little of Asher Lev in all of us. Maybe the whole drawing thing doesn't really connect with me, but what does connect with me is that there is a time in everyone's life were their parents haven't always liked what we have done or what are decisions are in life. For Asher it is drawing, for me it is just to get through High School. I would definitely recommended this book for those who feel they have no one to be like because of what is holding them back, but there is. Just look at Asher Lev.
Book Review: Deeply affective
Summary: 4 Stars
The Chosen remains one of my favorite reads, and Potok has succeeded in writing another novel capable of touching raw human emotions with My Name is Asher Lev.Asher, an artistic prodigy, grows up in the world of the strictly observant Hasidic Jews. Yet his very being, his art, drives him to cross the boundaries of that world. Potok captures the anguish of Asher's family and community as well as Asher himself in his effort to express what is his destiny.
A powerful novel.
The beginning may be a little slow, but the book will be unforgettable.
Book Review: Potok deals with sweeping themes elegantly and gracefully
Summary: 4 Stars
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 clich?. 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.
--- Reviewed by Jen Robbins
Book Review: The Best I've Ever Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Okay, I read this book when I was a sophomore in high school and it was the only one I could actually read through. The story captures you and Asher becomes a person you need to know about. This is one of the few books I would love to read over and over again and I just wanted to make sure that people knew it was great!Book Review: Post War Hasidic community setting for Wonderful story
Summary: 5 Stars
Asher Lev was born not long after World War II to Hassidic parents living in Brooklyn. The Rebbe is the spiritual and earthly leader of a great and worldwide community of Hassidic followers; in some ways like the Pope, but closer to his community and with a more hands on approach. Asher's father is a great man who helps the Rebbe by traveling and setting up places for refugee Hasids to go, and by setting up ways for them to escape from brutal regimes. Asher's mother is a typical and loving Hasidic woman, and baby Asher is the world to her, that is, until he is a first grader and her brother is hit by a car and killed. She responds by having a nervous breakdown. The next few years are extremely difficult for Asher and his father, until she recovers and redirects her life by going to the university, an unusual step for a Hassidic woman of that era. Asher begins to draw.
By the time he is ten drawing is something he cannot stop doing. By the time he is twelve he is recognized by the Rebbe as someone who must draw and as someone who is a genius.
By the time he is a man he is alienated from his father, who believes drawing and painting come from the devil. He is also recognized by the art world as a genius, and is earning enough from his paintings to be able to travel and paint.
While working internally through his feelings about everything: Hasidism, creation, his family, his mother's breakdown, his father's travels, the world in general---he communicates those feelings through painting, as someone who can do nothing but what he is doing. In this is the set-up for a classic Greek tragedy. He can do nothing other than paint what he feels; his family cannot do other than be crushed by those paintings; the world cannot but be entranced by this genius painter, or by the painting with the most to communicate, the one that hurts his family the most.
The book paints a vivid description of life in the Brooklyn Hassidic community, and, on an entirely different plane, of the inevitable clash between the selfishness an artist must have for his art and the needs of a tightly knit community based on strict values. Chaim Potek is an outstanding storyteller, and the story moves well.