My Name is Asher Lev discussion questions

1) Who is Asher’s “mythic ancestor,” and what do his “visits” to Asher mean in the book? 2) Discuss the significance of the Levs’ living room window and the venetian blinds? Which characters look out the window, and why? In what way does the window become symbolic at the end of the book?
3) What hints does the reader receive regarding the events of Jacob Kahn’s past experiences as a Jewish artist?
4) Does Asher do the right thing or not by portraying his mother in a crucifixion painting? Discuss.
5) Aryeh’s religious beliefs clash with his son’s love of art. Explain why Aryeh reacts the way he does, and how his reaction impacts his relationship with Asher.
6) What role does the Rebbe play in Asher’s life?
7) Discuss the significance of Asher's lengthy stay in Europe.

8) Why does Potok choose to set My Name is Asher Lev in a Hasidic community?
9) Who plays the largest role in Asher's life and development?
10) Compare and contrast the way Asher's parents relate to him.
11) My Name is Asher Lev focuses heavily on the clash between cultures and the coming of age of a boy caught between two opposed traditions. This conflict is further conveyed in the mixed usage of language from both worlds. For example, at the very beginning of the book there is a paragraph beginning, "Often on Shabbos or festivals…." Here, the colloquial Yiddish word, "Shabbos" for the Sabbath is juxtaposed with the English word, "festivals," for the holidays. In Lev's household, the word "festivals would not have been used. This juxtaposition makes clear the change Lev has undergone and the continued cultural conflict in which he is mired. After all, he has forsaken only some, but not all of the Hebrew or Yiddish expressions for English ones.

December 2015: My Name is Asher Lev

Amy's final book pick is... My Name is Asher Lev, one of author Chaim Potok's better known works.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.

Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chaim Potok (February 17, 1929 – July 23, 2002) was an American Jewish author and rabbi. Potok is most famous for his first book The Chosen (1967), which was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies.

Herman Harold Potok was born in Buffalo, New York, to Benjamin Max (died 1958) and Mollie (née Friedman) Potok (died 1985), Jewish immigrants from Poland. He was the oldest of four children, all of whom either became or married rabbis. His Hebrew name was Chaim Tzvi (חיים צבי).

He received an Orthodox Jewish education. After reading Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited as a teenager, he decided to become a writer (he often said that the novel Brideshead Revisited is what inspired his work and literature). He started writing fiction at the age of 16. At age 17 he made his first submission to the magazine The Atlantic Monthly. Although it wasn't published, he received a note from the editor complimenting his work.

In 1949, at the age of twenty, his stories were published in the literary magazine of Yeshiva University, which he also helped edit. In 1950, Potok graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English Literature.

After four years of study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America he was ordained as a Conservative rabbi. He was appointed director of LTF, Leaders Training Fellowship, a youth organization affiliated with Conservative Judaism.

Potok met Adena Sara Mosevitzsky, a psychiatric social worker, at Camp Ramah in Ojai, California, where he served as camp director (1957–59). They were married on June 8, 1958, and had three children.

After the publication of Old Men at Midnight, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died at his home in Merion, Pennsylvania on July 23, 2002, aged 73.

DID YOU KNOW?
- In 1972, he published My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a boy struggling with his relationship with his parents, religion and his love of art.
- In 1990, he published The Gift of Asher Lev, the sequel to My Name is Asher Lev.
- His novel The Chosen was made into a film released in 1981, which won the most prestigious award at the World Film Festival, Montreal. Potok had a cameo role as a professor.
- While not Hasidic, Potok was raised in an extremely Orthodox home. In the book, Asher Lev wants to be a painter which causes much conflict with his father who wants him to do something else, much as Chaim Potok did during his childhood. Asher decides to continue as a painter and it disturbs his family, but Potok eventually decided to be an author and painted in his free time. Potok has said he relates to Asher Lev more than any of his other characters.


~ Wikipedia