Itemize Of Books My Name Is Asher Lev (Asher Lev #1)
| Title | : | My Name Is Asher Lev (Asher Lev #1) |
| Author | : | Chaim Potok |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 369 pages |
| Published | : | March 11th 2003 by Anchor (first published 1972) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics |
Chaim Potok
Paperback | Pages: 369 pages Rating: 4.21 | 34989 Users | 2644 Reviews
Chronicle In Pursuance Of Books My Name Is Asher Lev (Asher Lev #1)
Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.
Mention Books Concering My Name Is Asher Lev (Asher Lev #1)
| Original Title: | My Name Is Asher Lev |
| ISBN: | 1400031044 (ISBN13: 9781400031047) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Asher Lev #1 |
| Setting: | United States of America |
Rating Of Books My Name Is Asher Lev (Asher Lev #1)
Ratings: 4.21 From 34989 Users | 2644 ReviewsColumn Of Books My Name Is Asher Lev (Asher Lev #1)
The book is famous in part for its opening lines:My name is Asher Lev, the Asher Lev, about whom you have read in newspapers and magazines, about whom you talk so much at your dinner affairs and cocktail parties, the notorious and legendary Lev of the Brooklyn Crucifixion.A Jewish boy, only child to parents belonging to a strict Hasidic orthodox sect, is born with a gift for painting. (The sect is called Ladover in the book but wiki says it is the Lubavitch sect of Crown Heights, Brooklyn inMy 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.
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.
Over the years, my Dad and I would occasionally have a conversation about this book. It would invariably go something like this:My dad asks, "You have never read My Name is Asher Lev?" and I would reply, "No, I haven't""You are so lucky! Now you still have the joy of looking forward to reading the book.""We've had this conversation before, Dad.""Then why haven't you read it yet?""Because as soon as I read it, you won't say I'm so lucky anymore."I think the risk was worth it to be "less lucky"
You're a Hasidic Jew. Is that your identity? You're an artist, a "prodigy." Is that your identity? You're being pulled by opposing forces, urges, needs: You're Chaim Potok's Asher Lev; you're also Rivkeh Lev, Asher's mother. Or perhaps you're a nameless illustration of the human condition. If, however, your name is Asher Lev, then, unlike ordinary dual creatures, you come to realize that "paint" begins with pain and ends with the letter that looks like a cross. And the pain that is yours is not
The first time I read this book--for my 11th grade English class--I read it in one afternoon, and I can honestly say that it changed my life. The second time around was just as powerful for me. Like many others have commented, the genius in Chaim Potok's writing is his remarkable ability to drive a book forward with virtually no plot. Asher Lev doesn't do a lot of things aside from paint and worship for years, but the real story is his internal struggle and his battle with his feelings--it's
Powerful. This is the story of a Hasidic Jew who is a gifted painter, a talent not approved of among orthodox Jews. His life becomes a struggle between his father--who tries to stir him away from the arts to more traditionally accepted hobbies all the while trying to understand him--and his need to draw to express himself. I could sympathize with all the characters in the book: his father for trying to hold onto his religious convictions without dominance but love, his mother for trying to love
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