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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Name is Asher Lev, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Divine vs. the Demonic
Art and Religious Faith
Creativity, Self-Expression, and Truth
Family Conflict
Summary
Analysis
Asher draws Stalin’s corpse over and over again, in many different ways: hollow, bloated, distorted, disfigured. When Aryeh sees the piles of drawings, he says, “You can’t study Chumash, but this you have time for.” Asher just keeps drawing. For the first time, he uses charcoal, bought at Yudel Krinsky’s store, to add depth to the portrait of Stalin. His mother comes in and admires the drawing, though she agrees with Asher that “it isn’t pretty.” She tells Asher that he must study. She also tells him that next week, they will be getting their passports for Vienna. Asher continues to insist that he won’t be going to Vienna. He’ll be staying with Uncle Yitzchok. Rivkeh asks him not to be a child.
Once Asher starts drawing again, he can’t stop. Aryeh is dismayed, seeing the revival of drawing as nothing but a distraction from the more important work of studying the Bible. Asher also expands his artistic horizons by exploring different media, showing his independence. His continued insistence that the move is impossible for him reinforces this, suggesting that there is a rift between what Asher’s parents’ expectations and his own sense of what the proper path is for himself.
Themes
The next day, Asher works on a portrait of Yudel Krinsky. Yudel shows Asher how to spray fixative on the drawing to keep the charcoal from rubbing off. He tells Asher that he has a great gift. Asher gives him the drawing.
For the first time, Asher gets affirmation of his artistic talent from outside of his family, and gifts his art to someone else. Significantly, he freely gives his art to Yudel, who by now is something of a father figure, a contrast to how he once felt threatened and confused by Uncle Yitzchok’s joke about buying Asher’s artwork. This suggests that although Asher is deeply tied to his family, he also feels a need to explore and find fulfillment in the wider world outside his insular community.
Themes
Later, Asher goes into Uncle Yitzchok’s nearby jewelry and watch-repair shop. Asher normally avoids the store because he doesn’t like its cold, fluorescent brightness. Yitzchok is pleased to see Asher, but his smile disappears when Asher abruptly asks, “Can I stay with you when [my parents] go to Vienna?” Yitzchok seems dumbfounded and tells Asher he must think about it.
Asher’s childish self-absorption is evident in the fact that he drops his request on Uncle Yitzchok with no warning to him or his parents. At the same time, he’s serious about the threat that a move to Vienna poses in his mind—he is clearly willing to risk disappointing his parents if it means getting to stay where he feels comfortable and safe.
Themes
That night, Aryeh tells Asher he needs to stop “this foolishness.” At bedtime, Rivkeh tells Asher that he’s hurting his father by behaving this way. Asher tells her, “I don’t want to lose it again, Mama. I don’t care about anyone.” She leaves without saying goodnight.
Aryeh sees Asher as simply being obstructive, and Rivkeh appeals to him regarding the pain his resistance is causing. But Asher is fixed on not losing “it”—his drawing—again. In his mind, this loss of self-expression poses a threat to his very survival.
Themes
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The following week, Asher works on a portrait of his mother. Rivkeh asks Asher why he draws: “What does it mean to you, my Asher? […] Because it may hurt us.” Asher is so focused on his drawing that he barely hears her and doesn’t respond. Rivkeh says, “Ribbono Shel Olom, what are we going to do?”
Rivkeh continues to occupy a mediating role—modeling for Asher and trying to understand his feelings while also mindful of the difficulty they pose. But art demands so much of Asher’s attention that he doesn’t have room for anything else.
Themes
That Shabbos evening, Asher realizes that something is happening to his eyes: he “saw lines and planes I had never seen before. I could feel with my eyes.” He can feel texture and color, too, as if “with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake.” He feels frightened.
As he continues to mature as an artist, Asher’s ability to see literally transforms—a latent talent that only needed to be awakened. But, since art has largely been portrayed by the authority figures in his life as something dark or demonic, he has no frame of reference for making sense of his creative drive.
Themes
Aryeh pauses in his Shabbos hymns to praise Asher’s drawing of Rivkeh. Then he says that Asher has a gift. It might be from God, or it might be from the Other Side. If it’s the latter, “then it is foolishness […] for it will take you away from Torah and from your people.” He tells Asher about the suppression of the yeshivos in Russia under Communism. Hasidic groups, like the Ladover, were the only ones who fought back. Even Jewish Communists tried to destroy the religious Jews, Aryeh says.
Somewhat confusingly, Aryeh tells Asher that his talent might originate from the side of evil and impurity rather than the side of holiness. The evidence for this, in his mind, will be that art pulls Asher away from the most important things—his faith and his community. To bring this home, he tells Asher about the resistance of Ladover Jews, even to other Jews who turned on their people. His implication is that Asher could end up betraying his people in this way, too.
Themes
Aryeh goes on to explain that it’s up to people to take the first step toward a connection with the Master of the Universe. When that is done, the Master of the Universe moves in and “[widens] the passageway.” Aryeh believes that the Ladover have a responsibility to make passageways for Russian Jews, because they can’t do it from their side. That’s why the Rebbe is sending him to Europe. In his view, nothing in the world is more important than these Jewish lives and fulfilling their hunger for Torah. Asher sees “the strong dream that filled” his father’s eyes and says he understands.
Aryeh goes on to explain the nature of religious duty. He conceives this duty as having to do with creating opportunities for Russian Jews. He implicitly includes Asher in this obligation and doesn’t allow room for any other conception of a religious obligation. While Asher doesn’t really understand his father’s passion itself, he understands having a “strong dream”—he has one of his own.
Themes
At bedtime, Asher tells his mother that he, too, is “a Jewish life” who’s precious in God’s eyes, and doesn’t someone have a responsibility to Him? Something inside Asher tells him he shouldn’t go to Vienna, he insists. Rivkeh tells him he’s being a child. Asher asks why no one is listening to him. Rivkeh replies, “Everyone is listening […] There would be no problem if no one were listening to you, Asher.”
Asher struggles to express his sense that going to Vienna will compromise his art. This comes out sounding quite childish and self-centered, and Rivkeh, always absorbing both Aryeh’s and Asher’s pain while bearing her own, points out that his objections really are being taken seriously.
Themes
During the Passover Seder, Uncle Yitzchok looks at Asher’s drawings. He tells Asher, “Millions of people can draw.” Asher needs to grow up and stop driving his father crazy, Yitzchok says. Asher gives up asking if he can stay with Yitzchok’s family, but he still feels he can’t leave his street.
Although Uncle Yitzchok has been supportive of Asher’s drawing in the past, he’s making the point that Asher must think of something besides his desire to draw—it doesn’t make him unique. The conflict between the demands of Asher’s art and his faith are building to a climax.
Themes
When Asher next visits Yudel Krinsky, he asks if his father’s claims about the Ladover and the Jewish Communists were true. Yudel says they’re true. He tells Asher stories about the secret police arresting Jews on the Sabbath, and accusations that Jews were trying to subvert the Communist government. Many were tortured, and some starved because they refused to eat non-Kosher food. Yudel is eating matzo, and he offers Asher some, telling Asher how strange he finds it—in Russia, people went to prison for matzos, but here, it is abundant.
Asher hears from Yudel Krinsky about the sacrifices many Jews have endured under external pressures. While these conversations help answer Asher’s questions about his heritage and strengthen his sense of religious identity, they also constitute additional pressure, as he tries to create a space within his religious and familial identity for the artistic drive that’s deeply part of him.
Themes
Asher slowly walks home along the parkway, enjoying the spring warmth and the familiar sights of his street. In particular, he notices a little girl of about three walking with a boy of about seven. The siblings are laughing together. When Asher gets home, Mrs. Rackover scolds him for dawdling and being late. She tells Asher that he’s driving everyone crazy “with your pictures and your stubbornness” and that he should be ashamed. Asher just continues thinking about the siblings he saw and about the change he’s noticed in his eyes. He spends the day drawing a series of pictures of the pair. When his mother sees the drawings, her eyes grow moist, and she leaves in silence. Asher notices that she has brought home a pile of books about Russia.
Even when Asher is scolded for his apparent obliviousness and lack of consideration, he’s really just distracted by the consuming pressure of rediscovering his world through his “new” eyes. Asher’s drawings of the young siblings remind Rivkeh of herself and her brother Yaakov when they were children. This hints at what will be an ongoing tension in Asher’s art—he is a sensitive observer of the world, and is highly perceptive to underlying truths. That same sensitivity and perceptiveness causes unintended pain to others, who are not as willing to confront uncomfortable realities.
Themes
The next day, Aryeh observes that Asher seems unhappy. He asks if it’s because Aryeh travels so much. He used to feel the same way about his own father’s travels. But he says that the work must be done in this way, because “to touch a person’s heart, you must see a person’s face.” The early Hasidic Jews did their work in the same way. Before Aryeh’s father was killed, he’d been making plans to travel to the Ukraine to start underground yeshivos. When his father was killed, Aryeh was 14, and that’s when the Rebbe’s father brought Aryeh’s family to America. He felt that plans had been left unfinished.
Drawing on his own childhood experience, Aryeh assumes that Asher’s distraction and low spirits are because of his travel. As before, he tries to get through to Asher by talking about Ladover and family history—specifically his father’s brutal death and the sense of incompleteness it brought. Asher does understand what it’s like to miss one’s father and to feel “incomplete”—but his own attempts to deal with that, ironically, undermine his bond with his father.
Themes
At bedtime, Rivkeh asks if Asher understands what his father told him—“Do you understand what it means to leave a great work incomplete?” She explains that she is studying Russian history because Uncle Yaakov was supposed to become a professor of Russian history. After she graduates from college, she will accompany Aryeh to Vienna to help him.
Rivkeh, too, tries to appeal to Asher by talking about her own sense of work left “incomplete.” Like Aryeh, she feels obligated to pick up the mantle of someone dear to her. Unlike Asher’s, Rivkeh’s work complements Aryeh’s goals.
Themes
That night, Asher dreams of his mythic ancestor, “endlessly journeying.” His ancestor says thunderously, “And what are you doing with your time, my Asher Lev?” Asher wakes up and looks at the drawings he’d made that day. They look childish and frivolous to him—“What was a drawing in the face of the darkness of the Other Side?” He goes back to bed and, sensing he’s not a normal 10-year-old boy, asks God what is wanted from him. “It was horrifying to think my gift may have been given to me by the source of evil and ugliness.” During Passover, they learn that the surviving Jewish doctors have been released from prison, and that the charges against them had been lies. The following Thursday, Asher goes with his parents to get passports.
All the talk of journeys—and of his lack of a clear role in those journeys—prompts another ancestral dream. Asher continues to feel the pressure of the “other side” in his family’s story and feels that his art is feeble in the fact of that evil. What’s worse, he fears his art might originate from the Other Side. The complex duties and priorities of Asher’s family are baffling for him to navigate as a 10-year-old boy—he can scarcely understand his own family’s problems, let alone the plight of others in faraway countries. The fast pace of events for Russian Jews sweeps him along, leaving little room for him to make sense of his place in it all.
Themes
