Christian Symbolism In Chaim Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev

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My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, is about the life of a Hasidic Jew and famous artist, Asher Lev. Potok makes it clear from the beginning of the narrative that creating art is what Asher was born to do. The narrative takes us through various stages in Asher’s life, from child to adult and young artist to master painter. Even at a young age, Asher tries to draw everything he sees around him. His artistic impulse drives him to do certain things of which others in his community don’t approve of. Throughout the book, Asher has to decide between his precious arts or the community of his parents.
The book follows Asher's development as a person and an artist. Asher is very gifted as an artist and, when he was younger, couldn’t control himself. He often seems detached from the world around him and generally zoned out. As Asher grows, the conflict becomes more visible between art and religion. He makes more decisions about what is more important to him. The conflict becomes one not only of Asher's art, but of his need to express his feelings through it. Asher expresses his mother's pain is through a Christian symbol. Lev’s art has led him to accept a world that is very different from his Hasidus society, to evolve meaning from Christian symbols. On the other hand, he finds it freeing expressing himself and how he personally sees the world. His freedom comes at a price though.
Asher’s parents, specifically his father Aryeh, do not approve of his gift. The story is told from Asher’s point of view, as he reflects over the events that have taken place in his life. Even in beginning of the story, the reader is given a picture of his father’s attitude towards his art. After Aryeh calls his art foolishness, this sets up the relationship bet...

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... paintings. “‘There are limits Asher...everything has a limit.’”, Rivkeh says. Asher’s art, has crossed boundaries that even his mother was no longer able deal with.
In “Beauty, Sentimentality and the Arts,” in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts”, Jeremy Begbie refers to Rivkeh’s resistance to Asher’s art as an example of sentimentalism. It does not allow her to see the truth or real beauty in Asher’s art. She knows that his renderings are well crafted. But she will not say it is beautiful if it doesn’t depict the “pretty” world that she dreamed of. Asher forces himself to paint these “pretty” things for his mother to please her. Asher has always understood the world to be much worse than his mother admits to. Because of this, Asher feels that he is not being true to himself or his art by depicting the world only as a “pretty” place, he depicts it much uglier.

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