My Name Is Asher Lev

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring for all ages
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Deeply affective
Review: 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.

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Summary: Potok deals with sweeping themes elegantly and gracefully
Review: 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.

--- Reviewed by Jen Robbins

Rating:
Summary: The Best I've Ever Read
Review: 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!

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Summary: Post War Hasidic community setting for Wonderful story
Review: 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.

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Summary: Read Without Prejudice
Review: 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.

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Summary: Asher, Chaim, and Judaism--a Beautiful Tale.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Terrifying Portrayal of Religious Intolerance
Review: 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.

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Summary: Jewish Christian Relations
Review: The book "My Name Is Asher Lev" must have done something emotional to me because this is the first book review I have written. From my perspective- A Jew and art teacher/author I would like to add that his book shows that an artist has what is called "the artist way of looking at things". The artist- by genes- was born to see the world differently even though he was born into the most religious fundamentalist of families. Who will win out in the end, genetics or family- wow!!! Another great message in this book is how even after years of persecution of the Jews by Christianity ( this book takes place in the years right after WWII) the Jews have to reconcile with Christianity and not through the baby out with the bath water. That is using art in this example- even a crucification- can have artistic value and meaning to a Jew who has suffered. Even a "nude" can have value and is part of the world even if nudity is offensive to anyone (not just Jews or Hasidic Jews). Thus this book is more popular today and meaningful to most especially when the Jewish world is now a world player again and Jews and Christians or even other faiths are cherishing what is more common between us than what is not. I think this is what Chaim Potok as a Rabbi really meant to happen through his work.

Rating:
Summary: Read the whole series
Review: It is entirely possible that there are people who have never struggled with their heritage, their parent's expectations, a rigid culture imposing itself on an adolescent, or the yearning for self expression. It is also possible that there are parents somewhere who haven't struggled with the desire and drive to recreate themselves in their children and the equally strong desire to see them grow as individuals.

These are the people who will find little to identify with, learn, or enjoy in "My Name Is Asher Lev."