This features the agonizing young years of Asher Lev caught between
the imperatives of his Hasid family's dynastic destiny and the
forbidden visions of the goyische world of art. Asher's father
exists, as did his fathers before him, within the rituals of prayer
and sacrifice and does "good deeds" as the Brooklyn-based emissary
of a Landovian Rebbe. He helps to establish schools, consolidate
communities in Europe and to rescue Jews from Soviet oppression.
But Asher, while haunted by his mythic ancestor calling him to
follow his father, is also driven by his own compulsion to draw and
paint. When it becomes obvious Asher cannot assume a preordained
role, the Rebbe gives him a cautious blessing and Asher studies
painting with Jacob Kahn, an elderly artist, while Asher's father
deepens the silence which divides them. But his tormented mother is
a weary voyager between the two, and it is Asher's knowledge of her
suffering - a clearer vision of his own identity and an
understanding of the many masks of atonement - that produce the
masterpieces, two Crucifixions, which bring him both fame and
exile. When Potok is writing of Crown Heights - the enclosed
Hasidic structure of circumscribed piety, hierarchical certainties,
and the close weave of obligations and dependencies - his work has
a moving acuity. However the visual arts seem somewhat out of his
reach and the creative impulse is articulated by Jacob in the
declaratives of the Hemingway era: "I will teach you how to handle
rage in color and line. You draw with too much love. . . ." But
Potok, as in The Chosen, is able to sustain a singleminded gloomy
intensity and will attract the same audience, assisted by the
Literary Guild selection. (Kirkus Reviews)
'I am a traitor, an
apostate, a self-hater,
an inflicter of shame
upon my family, my
friends, my people;
also, I am a mocker of
ideas sacred to
Christians ...'
Asher Lev is the artist who painted the sensational 'Brooklyn Crucifixion'. Into it he poured all the anguish and torment a Jew can feel when torn between the faith of his fathers and the calling of his art.
Here Asher Lev plunges back into his childhood and recounts the story of love and conflict which dragged him to the crossroads.
The Gift of Asher Lev, the sequel to this book, is also published by Penguin
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