Book Review: My Name Is Asher Lev Is The Name Of The Book

Book Review
Name
Institution
My Name is Asher Lev
‘My Name is Asher Lev’ is a book written by Chaim Potok. Chaim Potok was born in the year 1929 in the city of New York. He grew up in an Orthodox home and also went to an orthodox university (Yeshiva University) where he undertook an incredibly broad literature study. He graduated from university in the year 1950 and the year 1965, he was ordained as a Rabbi. My Name is Asher Lev novel is about a young boy who significantly contends to reconcile his quite appealing talents with the strong religious beliefs of the community in which he was brought up. The contention is something really known to Chaim Potok, and that is why he preferred to practice Conservative Judaism to Orthodox Judaism, which was practiced by his parents because the conservative Judaism had fewer rules and restrictions and rendered him more freedom as an artist.
My Name is Asher Lev explores the same themes as Chaim’s The Chosen novel since the two works are about protagonists who attempt to reconcile their gifts with the communities they had been brought up in. However, in the ‘The Chosen’ novel the main characters talents’ were academic and not artistic. In the My Name is Asher Lev novel Chaim Potok depicts that the battle between individualism and tradition is steady. The author continued the story of Asher Lev in his other novel titled The Gift of Asher Lev. Until his death in the year 2002, Potok remained an incredibly active person as a writer and also an active individual in the religion of his upbringing. Below will be a summary of the My Name is Asher Lev novel. There will also be an exploration of the themes and motifs portrayed in the novel, and lastly, the paper will cover the strengths and faults of the novel.
Summary
My Name is Asher Lev novel is an account of a boy who was an incredible talent in painting. The artistic inclination of the boy brings him into an intense conflict with the members of his community as well as his parents. The Jewish community and the parents of the boy only valued and treasured things related to religion, and since they considered art unreligious it is absolute, they could not have supported Asher Lev’s gift (Burke, 2016). They termed art as a waste of time and possibly sacrilege. Asher Lev’s father was a man strong devoted in serving his leader, the Rebbe, by traveling around the world bringing their sect teachings to other Jews. Asher Lev’s mother, on the other hand, is greatly traumatized by the devotion of his husband to the Rebbe and his constant travelling (Hanna, 2015). She fears that her husband would end up being killed while travelling for the Rebbe just like what had happened to his brother. The community and the whole family also suffer anxiety for her husband’s safety.
At one point, the Rebbe asks Asher's father to move to Vienna so that he can effectively perform his work. Asher is greatly distraught by this, and he openly expresses his unhappiness over the prospect of moving to Vienna (Burke, 2016). The Rebbe intervenes, and ultimately he decides that Asher would not move to Vienna and therefore the dad was to move alone to Vienna. When Asher’s father leaves to Vienna As...