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: 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.
Book Review: Read Without Prejudice
Summary: 5 Stars
I would perhaps not have been inspired to write a review of this brilliant book had I not read Rachel Grey's review... In general, other reviewers have said all the things I would want to say about "My Name is Asher Lev;" its exquisite writing, its heartbreaking and beautiful portrayal of a developing artist trying to reconcile his need to create with the demands of his family and his religious community - these are well covered. But Miss Grey's review moved me to respond.Dear girl - how closely did you read this book? It does not take place in the present time; it was published in 1972, and is set somewhat earlier. Asher's family in no way represents mainstream Judaism, which I would think any careful reader - even one ignorant of Jewish culture and practice - would have understood. The Levs are Hasids, members of a small, conservative, fundamentalist segment of the Jewish world. In that respect, your identification with Asher's experience as similar to that of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household is entirely appropriate.
Potok is not by any means suggesting that all Jews would be dismayed to find Picasso growing up in the back bedroom. He is portraying a very specific world, and through that world exploring the conflicts that an artist - one who is powerfully, passionately driven to realize his unique vision - may encounter with his family, his community, and even his own spiritual nature as a result of that need to create.
Please do read this book again, and please don't condemn Judaism or Jews - or even Hasids - for the behavior of Asher's family that you find distasteful. A work of art, a piece of literature, should not stand as a sweeping statement on an entire class of people, nor should a work of fiction be read as though it intends to make such a statement. In this case, at least, "My Name is Asher Lev" is a specific exploration of a microcosm inhabited by interesting, multi-dimensional, sometimes unsympathetic members of a minority sect. The general message to take from this book is not that Jews are intolerant of art and artists or communicate badly with their children, but the far more complex truths Potok investigates regarding the interplay of religion, family, and artistic vision.
Book Review: Profound
Summary: 5 Stars
Chaim Potok shows profound understanding of what it is to "be" an artist. I read this book for the first time when I was in my teens, and struggling with my need to create versus the need for a reliable source of income. It was astonishing to read such a beautifully written description of what had been going on in my head since I was a small child!Now, as I am heading into middle life, I have just reread "My Name is Asher Lev", and it is like a homecoming of sorts. I am again nodding my head and thinking "yes!". The artist inside will not rest until it is expressed. The story, and it's inspiring characters still speak to me on a very deep level, and again, I am struck by Mr.Potok's insight into the artist's mind and being.
While some aspects of orthodox Judaism - such as the reaction of Asher's father to Asher's work - are very disturbing in the book, Chaim Potok sensitively portrays Hasidism as a very meaningful and inherently beautiful way of life, and I appreciate having been enlightened even a little to what it is all about.
I could not possibly begin to explain how profound this book has been for me. I am eternally grateful to Chaim Potok for this timeless work of art.
Book Review: Asher, Chaim, and Judaism--a Beautiful Tale.
Summary: 5 Stars
Asher Lev--Chaim Potok--Judaism. These ingredients combine to create something brilliant and memorable. It is the tale of Asher as a young boy and Asher as a man. It is a tale of sadness; it is a tale of joy. It is the chronicle of a coming of age story; it is the growing of a prodigy. In short, it is a book that must be read. Beautiful, weaving, strangely haunting, Asher's thoughts and musings echo in my mind. The moments of his life, so skillfully portrayed by Potok, create a picture impossible to mistake. Almost artist-like himself, Potok has created a masterpiece in the form of a book about a boy and then a man, named Asher Lev.Book Review: Terrifying Portrayal of Religious Intolerance
Summary: 4 Stars
Of all the people reviewing this book, I don't see anyone who shared my absolute horror at the attitudes evinced by Asher's parents and community about his artwork. Took me right back to the days of growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household, except that Asher's world was possibly even more confining. This book took my previously positive impressions of Judaism and turned them upside down... are Jews today really so hung up on the past and on forcing children to follow their parents that they "can't reconcile themselves" to their children's success in another area? Are they really so anti-Christian that to paint a crucifixion is considered a betrayal? Where's their capacity to step back and say "okay.. it's just a picture meant to portray suffering..."? The people in this book TERRIFIED me with their tunnel vision and intolerance. However, throughout it all, religion is never explicitly blamed for their brutal attitudes, and I can't figure out why. (Oh, wait, Potok is a Jew... now I get it.)I'm not trying to insult the Jewish religion, since I still know so little about it, but I will say that if it does have rewarding aspects, a feeling of closeness to God or whatever, they are not portrayed sufficiently in this book. As I turned the pages, I never understood why anyone would remain in that religious community, with all the misery shown therein. I also never understood why there was such incredible lack of communication in the Lev household, such that Lev didn't tell his parents about the crucifixion paintings until they came to the show. That just seemed unrealistic to me.
Aside from that, great book, great writing. "He left the taste of thunder in my mouth"... what a sentence! It's staying on my shelf until I can work up the nerve to read it again.