My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
"My Name Is Asher Lev" is a novel by Chaim Potok that explores the complex journey of a young Hasidic Jewish artist grappling with the conflicting demands of his faith and his passion for art. Set in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, the story centers on Asher Lev, a child prodigy whose artistic talent is both a source of pride and a cause of tension within his deeply religious family. His father, Aryeh Lev, serves as an emissary for the Hasidic rebbe and holds traditional views that often clash with Asher's burgeoning identity as an artist.
The narrative delves into themes of Jewish and family identity in the aftermath of the Holocaust, highlighting the struggles Asher faces as he seeks validation for his art in a community that views creativity primarily through a religious lens. Despite initial support from his mother, Rivkeh, Asher must navigate the disapproval of his parents and the broader Hasidic community, which restricts artistic expression outside of religious interpretation.
With the guidance of his artistic mentor, Jacob Kahn, Asher ultimately confronts the tension between his artistic aspirations and his cultural identity, leading to a pivotal exhibition that showcases his work but also forces him to make difficult choices about his future. The novel concludes with Asher leaving his community to pursue his artistic path while maintaining his connection to his Jewish heritage, symbolizing the ongoing struggle for self-expression within cultural constraints.
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Subject Terms
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
First published: 1972
The Work
My Name Is Asher Lev, perhaps Chaim Potok’s greatest novel, is an excellent example of the Künstlerroman, which is a novel about an artist’s development. It confronts issues of Jewish and family identity in the post-Holocaust world. Asher Lev is a child prodigy artist, the only child of a Hasidic Jewish couple that lives in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Aryeh Lev, Asher’s father, serves as a personal emissary for the rebbe or tzaddik, the “righteous one” or religious leader of the Hasidic community.
The orthodox Hasidic Jewish culture into which Asher is born approves of creativity only in the context of interpretation of Talmudic passages. Asher finds it difficult, and at times embarrassing, to follow his muse; he finds it natural to draw and to create pictures. Rivkeh Lev, Aryeh’s mother, initially supports Asher’s desire to draw, but she soon sides with her husband, who believes that drawing and the fine arts are products of a gentile culture. In the years during and immediately following World War II, Aryeh Lev travels the world to minister to Hasidic Jews who have been displaced by the Nazi Holocaust. Since Hasids believe that the Jewish state will be re-created in Israel only with the coming of the Messiah, who has not yet arrived, Hasidic Jews generally did not support the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Aryeh travels about the world for the tzaddik, defending himself and his spiritual leader from the arguments of Zionist Jews and gentiles and attempting to do good works. He returns to a household in Brooklyn where his son is neglecting study of the Talmud because of his personal obsession with art and aesthetics.
The tzaddik, however, is wise enough to allow Asher to follow his destiny and to mediate between his conflicting identities. The tzaddik arranges for Jacob Kahn, an expatriate from the Hasidic community and a world-renowned sculptor, to serve as Asher’s artistic mentor. Asher’s apprenticeship as an artist culminates with a midtown New York showing of his work. Central to the showing is a pair of paintings, Brooklyn Crucifixion I and Brooklyn Crucifixion II, which show his mother, crucified in the venetian blinds of their apartment, her face split into “Picassoid” thirds, looking to the father, the son, and the street. The works assure Asher’s reputation as a great artist but also assure, because of their religious content, that he will have to leave his Hasidic community in Brooklyn, as he does at the end of the novel. With the tzaddik’s blessing, he goes to Paris to board with a Hasidic family and to continue to worship and define himself as a Hasidic Jew artist.
Bibliography
Abramson, Edward A. Chaim Potok. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Chapter four is devoted entirely to My Name Is Asher Lev and includes sections on “Judaism and the Visual Arts,” “The Individual and the Community,” “Ancestors and Fathers,” and “Artistic and Stylistic Development.” Also of interest are the book’s first and last chapters entitled “From Rabbi to Writer” and “The Writer Arrived.” Abramson includes a six-page selected bibliography.
Kremer, S. Lillian. “Dedalus in Brooklyn: Influences of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on My Name Is Asher Lev.” Studies in Jewish American Literature 4 (1985): 26-38. Finds “the mark of James Joyce indelibly stamped on the third and fourth novels of Chaim Potok,” particularly in the use of “monologue, stream of consciousness techniques, and epiphany.”
Pinsker, Sanford. “The Crucifixion of Chaim Potok/The Excommunication of Asher Lev: Art and the Hasidic World.” Studies in Jewish American Literature 4 (1985): 39-51. Calls the novel a Kunstlerroman, a novel of an artist’s education, and views Asher Lev’s departure at the novel’s end as “a kind of exile, a kind of excommunication.”
Sgan, Arnold D. “The Chosen, The Promise, and My Name Is Asher Lev.” The English Journal 66 (March, 1977): 63-64. Erroneously calls Potok a psychologist but offers useful plot summaries and themes for each novel. Discusses Potok’s place in high school units on “Ethnic Literature” or “The Search for Identity.”
Stern, David. Review of My Name Is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok. Commentary 54 (October, 1972): 102, 104. Traces some of the similarities between the main characters in The Chosen, The Promise, and My Name Is Asher Lev and sees in those characters’ dilemmas “the dilemma of modern religious Judaism itself.”
Walden, Daniel, ed. Studies in American Jewish Literature 4 (1985). This issue, entitled “The World of Chaim Potok,” contains articles on My Name Is Asher Lev cited above and other articles of interest.