Skylar's review
My Name Is Asher Lev
by Chaim Potok
Thank you for sharing this with me. I might just have to go out and try to ind this book. Thanks soooooo much!
Skylar's review
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Skylar's review
rating:
bookshelves:
judaism,
literature
My Name is Asher Lev is about, at its heart, "the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other's throats." It depicts that unspeakable mystery in all its painful humanity, and as a consequence the book is moving and disturbing. Asher Lev is a Hasidic Jew who has a gift for painting, a "foolishness" his father cannot understand. Potok could have turned Asher's father into a villain; instead he makes him human and sympathetic. Asher ends up painting crucifixions "because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment." It's a book about what it means to be an artist, what it means not to betray yourself, and what it means to be a part of the Master of the Universe's "suffering world," which we "do not comprehend." There are so many rich themes packed into this book, that they form layers ...more
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Thank you for sharing this with me. I might just have to go out and try to ind this book. Thanks soooooo much!