A review by sorinahiggins
My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

5.0

Fantastic book! The most coherent answer I have yet read to all aesthetic questions, all the more amazing because it doesn’t answer them… it just is the answer, or the art that lives in the book is the answer. Anyhow, it’s about an Orthodox Jew who is born with an incredible, uncontrollable gift for painting. His parents don’t understand this non-Orthodox gift, this “waste of time.” He should be learning Torah & traveling around the world helping other Hasidim, not scribbling on walls & on the pages of sacred books! But the Rabbi eventually realizes that this is Asher’s gift, & sends him to study with a great (but non-religious) artist. Asher’s parents are more and more alienated, especially when he begins painting models in the nude and studying crucifixes—because “I can’t get that expression anywhere else.” Brilliant and heartbreaking.