My Name Is Asher Lev

I have been on a little run of re-reading Chaim Potok in hopes of continuing on to finish all his novels this year. In college we were required to read The Chosen and I found a very deep connection to this book. So deep in fact, that my teacher, who was moving to Mongolia to teach English, gave me her copy of The Promise (the sequel). So late last year I re-read the Chosen for probably the third time and again deeply connected with the story of Ruevan and Danny and their fathers and their faith and their questions. I went on to my second reading of The Promise and found I felt as deep personal connection with the characters in this book.

Last week I finished my second reading of My Name is Asher Lev. I think because I have begun to venture more and more into the realm of creative writing I felt the questions Asher was forced to face about the conflict between art and his family/community directly.

The book is about a gifted boy, gifted at drawing, but more it is his sight that makes him great. His tutor speaks of his eyes and him having eyes only a very few have had. Potok brings you into this as when Asher looks at the world around him (and the book is in first person from his perspective) he sees lines and shapes and then he draws what he sees. His father and even his Hasidic Jewish community do not know what to do with him and his gift. His father calls it foolishness and wonder if it comes from "the other side."

But the Rebbe understands that it is a gift from the Master of the Universe and the only way for that gift to be nurtures is for Asher to be given into the hands of someone outside of the community, a Jewish artist, for whom the Rebbe has respect, but is not in the community. And his first warnings to Asher is to go back, does he realize that he is leaving the religious world and entering the world of the goy (gentile). He is leaving behind the traditions of his community and taking up the traditions of artistry (in the story this entails painting nudes and studying the medium of the crucifixion).

There is one conversation where Jacob (the tutor) says that an artist must be responsible to his art, to the truth he sees as an artist. This harkens back to an earlier page where Asher is reading a book on the Spirit of Art which says that an artist is "without patriotism, without home."I won't give away the end, which upon the second reading I realized is foreshadowed all the way through and is the necessary ending.

But is the artist lonely by necessity of his truths and what his truths do to those around him? If the artist has had experiences that were real and full of light and pain, and he paints or writes or sings those experiences as he must if he will be true to his art (not go the easier path of sentimental drivel or propaganda even for a good cause) how does he not hurt those he loves, how does he not, at least initially damage his community? And yet, is it the artist that is doing the damage or the communities refusal to look upon that truth that destroys? Is it the artists moral blindness to paint in such a way or is it the families moral blindness that chooses to listen to their son?

These are good questions.