Book Review: MY NAME IS ASHER LEV by Chaim Potok

My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Do you hear the pain carried on in the wind? It is the cry of wasted lives. Who dares add to that cry? Who dares drain the world of its light?"

Classes got suspended today, which gave me time to pick up this 1972 book that had been languishing in my TBR for months, one I'd heard so much about but never got around to reading until now. Foul weather allowed me to finish it in one sitting, it was THAT compelling! But it's one of those books whose ending I hated, with equal passion to the love I feel for the earlier chapters. I will admit that any book that gets a rise out of its reader is good, even if that goodness is incomplete.

It's a bildungsroman about a Hasidic Jew growing up in Brooklyn in the '50's (as the author did; later on I find that the book is biographical as Potok was also a Jewish artist who painted his own crucifixion, thereby causing pain to people of his religious tradition). In an ultraconservative world such as his, art has no place. But the Master of the Universe has given Asher Lev an enormous gift, which completely consumes his life to the point that he makes terrible choices.

The interesting thing about this book is how it will reflect your own values, as a reader. Perhaps it's the Filipino/Asian upbringing I've had, one that tends to prioritize the community over the individual, which explains why I hate the ending so.

How is a life to be lived? the book asks.

"Many people feel they are in possession of a great gift when they are young. But one does not always give in to a gift. One does with a life what is precious not only to one's own self but to one's own people," says Asher Lev's father, echoed by his uncle, and mother, and rabbi.

But then his art teacher puts goyish ideas in his head, dangerous ideas like the superiority of the individual over the herd, the innate rebelliousness of the artist throughout the ages.

Does art matter, in the modern world? "What was a drawing in the face of the darkness of the Other Side? What was a pen and paper, what were pastels, in the face of the evil of the shell?"

Asher Lev, as a child, weeps and cries YES, and continues to do so even as he grows older.

And this is why I detest the end. There is so much selfish egotism in the genius impressed with his own worth, believing his own life and feelings matter more than everyone else's. There is very little self-growth despite the passage of years. Asher Lev at the end is a childish adult who knowingly hurts others and finds his cruelty justifiable, and this is what makes me angry.

"You must not dislike God's world, even if it is unfinished," the book reminds us.

I do hope Asher Lev grows up in Book 2. It's a credit to Book 1's utterly hypnotic nature that I immediately got a copy of the sequel. Despite my dislike, I care about Asher Lev and what happens to him twenty years later.

I do wish I get the chance to watch the play version of this! I wasn't able to catch the 2017 Manila run. It would make for a very fascinating experience, I'm sure, especially in a post-pandemic world.

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