Book Review: My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
I’ve read a lot of books in the last few months – most amazing, some just eh, and I figured I’d begin writing book reviews and linking them on my Virtual Bookshelf for that year.
I read My Name is Asher Lev last fall and it remains pretty far up on my list of “highly recommended” books. A few spoilers ahead, but as such is the case with many books, Chaim Potok’s work is still worth reading, especially for writers and artists of all kind.
The Way of the Artist | Art as Vocation
Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev tackles the way of the artist, and the concept of art as a vocation, through a coming-of-age story rooted in a dichotomy of religious and secular definitions of art. Through the life of a blooming, young artist named Asher, Potok reminded me of my own responsibility to my craft and to the truth.
Potok’s characterization of Asher, growing from a young boy to a young man in one book, is impressive; it is difficult to grow a voice and grow it well in only a couple hundred pages. Though the perspective often shifts from voice of innocence to the voice of experience as Asher tells the story, the character’s own understanding of art as his vocation is brilliantly explored.
Through Asher’s life, Potok captures the importance of community in the Jewish life, how it is all encompassing and defining of a single persons’ individuality; you are who you are in relation to the whole.
“...though his culture often seems to clash with his love for art, it soon becomes a source of inspiration and the philosophy through which he understands life and beauty.”
As Asher discovers his own gift of art, his struggle of loyalty to his community and to his craft is explored throughout the book, highlighted especially through his drawing and painting and echoed further in his relationships with others. Asher cannot exist alone, though he tries. His identity is so closely related to his family and cultural identity; he is not Asher without his Jewish background, and though his culture often seems to clash with his love for art, it soon becomes a source of inspiration and the philosophy through which he understands life and beauty.
Potok’s embodiment of the artist’s life in Asher Lev is astute; he captures how an artist often wrestles with his craft.
Asher’s Conflict: Art or Family
Multiple times throughout the book, Asher is told that he must be a good artist if he is to justify how his craft affects those around him, those he loves. This conflict is often displayed through Asher’s position in the book—he is in a constant state of being pulled between two conflicting things: his art and his family. He is torn between his sense of community and his own identity as an artist. He is torn between doing what he cannot seem to stop (his art) and his mother’s love for himself and his father. This conflict affects the other characters as well as his mother is torn between Asher and his father. His father is torn between his love for his wife and community and his loyalty to the Rebbe and desire to help the Jews of Russia. The book is drenched in a constant state of pushing and pulling.
Another state of conflict shown in the book exists between what Asher’s father insists to be Asher’s own will to continue or not continue his art; he says Asher can stop if he wants to, that he has a will and is not an animal. However, as Potok paints so wonderfully, Asher cannot help himself.
He says to his father, “Some people can’t conceal their feelings, Papa” (296).
We Are Created to Create
There are many times he finds himself drawing without realizing what he’s done. A true artist cannot help himself; the art spills out of him. He cannot conceal something that so desperately wants out of him, something that demands to be on the page, on the canvas.
Asher’s inability to stop himself illustrates the human condition as created beings – we are like our Creator in that we must create; we cannot help ourselves. The question becomes what we create, as Asher himself is forced to answer toward the end of the book. But the desperation to create in the first place takes center stage in Asher’s development as a young man.
“A true artist cannot help himself; the art spills out of him.”
From this desperation, as Jacob Kahn, a famous artist who has taken Asher under his wing, strives to teach Asher, there is a responsibility to the craft of art.
Kahn says, “This is not a toy…This is a tradition; it is a religion, Asher Lev. You are entering a religion called painting” (213).
The responsibility of the artist to art comes in direct conflict with what Asher has always known to be his responsibility to his people, because “All Jews are responsible one for the other” (218). Kahn refutes this and says, “An artist is responsible to his art. Anything else is propaganda” (218).
“An artist is responsible to his art. Anything else is propaganda. ”
The conversation being had throughout this book in the context of the Jewish religion and the role of art for a Jew is one that extends beyond these characters and touches the heart of every person felt called to art. Potok brilliantly characterizes that inner conflict, the inner temptation to use art as a means to an end, rather than letting art exist for art’s sake.
Everything for the Glory of God
My favorite professor during my undergrad years, Dr. Epperson, drilled this concept into his students and I’m profoundly grateful for it. He used the argument that many Christians use, but flipped it in a way I also see exerted in Potok’s book.
He said that as believers we are called to do everything for the glory of God – not exactly a new concept.
From the characterizations of Rivkeh and Aryeh, Asher’s parents, I would say they believe this as well, but their problem lies in the disconnect they find with art having the capacity to glorify God, especially the art Asher begins to produce later in the book. Dr. Epperson told us that Christian writing or Christian art does not glorify God simply because it has the label of Christian; bad Christian writing and art exists and often does the opposite of its intent, becoming what Khan described as “propaganda.”
“Anything that is good and great glorifies God because he is good and great. Anything that speaks truth glorifies the Lord because He is the Truth - regardless of its “Christian” or “non-Christian” label.”
Furthermore, Dr. Epperson reminded us that good “secular” writing is not abhorrent to God simply because it does not bear His name. Rather, anything that is good and great glorifies God because he is good and great. Anything that speaks truth glorifies the Lord because He is the Truth.
Dr. Epperson continued that if we, his students, were to become good writers, we owed a responsibility to the craft first, because that responsibility is to God first. First, we do something well, and because it is done well, it is done for the Lord. This book reminded me of that valuable lesson, and I definitely recommended it to any writer, artist, creator, human – because we are created to create.
Final Thoughts | Book Review in Conclusion
I loved this book for the reminder it brought in my quest for good writing over “Christian” writing. I want to glorify God in my creating because it is good and true - it represents reality (both this broken world and the upside Kingdom of Christ) as it is; it tells the truth.
I recommend My Name is Asher Lev for all creatives out there seeking to glorify the Lord with their craft, or those who find themselves caught between their cultural identity and their desire to create. Do you have any recommendations that cover a similar theme? Tell me about them below, I’d love to learn more!
