My Name is Asher Lev: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

That fall and winter, Asher misses his father. They receive letters from all over Europe. Sometimes Asher lies awake and pictures his father journeying across Europe much like the mythic ancestor. He feels horrified at what he’s done and repeatedly promises himself that the next morning, he will tell Rivkeh that he wants to go to Vienna. But when morning comes, he can never do it.

Missing Aryeh, Asher finally begins to draw him—reading the newspaper, sitting on the parkway, walking with Rivkeh—“in all the small and quiet ways I had never thought to draw him before.” Asher feels closer to his father than ever before.

The same week that Aryeh left for Vienna, Rivkeh bought a small table and placed it in the living room to use as her desk. She wants to be able to look out the window, she says. She is now working toward a master’s degree in Russian affairs. She talks about her brother Yaakov. After their parents had died when the children were young, Yaakov had been like a mother and father to Rivkeh. Losing him was like losing her parents all over again.

Rivkeh’s bookshelves begin to fill with volumes on Russian history. She writes many papers for her courses, and she tells Asher he must learn to fall asleep to the sound of her typewriter. Sometimes Asher finds her in the morning having fallen asleep over her books. Sometimes Asher draws her peacefully sleeping in order to balance out the drawings of her standing unseeing at the window—moments when he knows that he is the cause of her unhappiness.

One day, Rivkeh brings home a gift for Asher—12 tubes of oil paints, brushes, an easel, canvases, and other supplies. After the next Shabbos, Asher sets up the easel and begins to experiment with the oil paints. By the next night, he finishes his first oil painting, of his mother looking out the living room window. “It was as if I had been painting in oils all my life.”

One January night, Rivkeh comes into Asher’s room as he’s working on a painting of Yudel Krinsky. Aryeh has written, asking about Asher’s schooling. She asks Asher what she should tell him. His teachers and the mashpia say that Asher isn’t trying. Asher barely responds; he is completely absorbed in the shapes and angles in his painting.

In school, Asher draws a picture of the teacher in his Hebrew notebook. The teacher asks him sadly when he will grow up—he is 11 years old. He explains that Asher does no honor to Aryeh with this behavior. The mashpia and Uncle Yitzchok also speak to Asher. Asher asks his mother, “What do they all want from me?” She tells Asher that a boy his age needs to study Torah. Asher thinks that he doesn’t hate studying; it’s just that his drawing demands all his strength. He doesn’t understand why they all can’t see that.

When Asher goes to visit Yudel Krinsky, Yudel tells him that he is a “scandal”: “Your father journeys through Europe bringing Jews back to Torah, and here his own son refuses to study Torah.” Mrs. Rackover refuses to speak to him. Asher hears about his father—and his failure to be a good son—everywhere he goes. He feels as though his father “was more in my life now than he had been before his journey.”

When Asher is off school for Purim, Rivkeh accompanies him to the Parkway Museum. Asher likes seeing the huge statue of Moses in a niche near the roof. Asher’s mother has never visited the museum before, except to see an exhibit of Jewish manuscripts with Yaakov. “We never thought it was important,” she says. They go upstairs to the galleries; guards look at them curiously. When Asher asks his mother questions about certain paintings, her face flushes, and she looks away uncomfortably.

When they look at some paintings containing nudes, Rivkeh explains that she’s embarrassed to stand in front of these paintings, and that it’s against Torah to paint women in this way. They look at some abstract paintings, and Asher says that he likes Picasso very much, although he does not understand him. When they get back to the subway platform, Asher asks his mother about the paintings they saw that included Jesus. Rivkeh explains that Jesus was killed by the Romans because he thought he was the moshiach, but he wasn’t. She says that she doesn’t begin to understand the belief of the “goyim” about Jesus.

Later, Rivkeh and Asher talk more about the museum. Rivkeh says that she hopes God will help her not to hurt Aryeh. Asher’s painting has “taken us to Jesus. And to the way [non-Jews] paint women. Painting is for goyim, Asher […] Torah Jews […] don’t draw and paint.”

The following week, Asher goes to the museum alone and “[spends] an hour copying paintings of Jesus into [his] sketchbook.” He’s aware of curious stares, and only later does it occur to him how strange he must have looked. When Asher gets home and shows his mother his drawings, Rivkeh is horrified. “Do you know how much Jewish blood has been spilled because of him, Asher?” she asks. Asher tries to explain that it was necessary to make these drawings; he couldn’t find the right expression anywhere else.

Over the coming weeks, Asher visits the museum many times. He copies paintings of nude women until he can draw the figures from memory. He doesn’t show any of those drawings to his mother. Rivkeh is busy preparing for Passover and writing her master’s dissertation, so she doesn’t ask him about the museum.

In the middle of April, Aryeh returns home. He looks “weary and gaunt.” He doesn’t greet Asher. He knows everything that’s happened—about the museum visits, the drawings of Jesus and nudes. He has just spent half of the past year establishing yeshivos and teaching Torah all over Europe. Now he comes home and “discovered that his own home was now inhabited by pagans.” He is in a rage unlike any Asher has seen before.

Asher’s drawings “had touched something fundamental to [Aryeh’s] being.” He keeps referring to “that man,” refusing to say Jesus’s name. He asks Asher if he understands how many Jews were killed during the Crusades and the Holocaust in the name of “that man.” Asher’s own grandfather,  he reminds him, was killed by a Russian peasant celebrating “that man’s” holiday. Regarding the nudes, he says, the body is a gift from God; the Torah forbids drawing it in an immodest way. Not to mention how much time Asher has wasted when he should have been doing his schoolwork. In the coming days, he continues to shout at Asher and even to fight with Rivkeh.

Later, when Aryeh is at a meeting with the Rebbe, Asher asks Rivkeh why Papa yells at her. She explains that he thinks she’s failing in her responsibilities to raise him, by “encouraging your foolishness.” She tells Asher that she had hoped he would thank her for the gift of oil paints by studying harder. She also bought them so that Asher wouldn’t steal from Yudel Krinsky again.

One morning at breakfast, Asher unthinkingly uses his fork as a drawing instrument. He’s suddenly aware that his father is squeezing his wrist. Aryeh squeezes so hard that Asher starts to cry. Aryeh is “quivering with rage.” Soon his parents are screaming at each other. Asher keeps saying that he can’t help it. Aryeh tells him that God gives every person a will; “only a sick man can’t help it.”

If Asher’s will makes him want to draw, Aryeh tells him, then it comes from the Other Side, and he must fight it. If he doesn’t, next he’ll “become a goy. Better you should not have been born.” When Rivkeh gasps, Aryeh tells her, “We must fight against the Other Side, Rivkeh […] Otherwise it will destroy the world.” These words echo in Asher’s mind throughout Passover.

By the next Shabbos, Aryeh is gentle and apologetic. Before synagogue the next morning, Rivkeh looks radiant. But Aryeh walks to synagogue without Asher. During the first Passover seder, Aryeh involuntarily glances at Asher during the seder reading about the evil son. Asher sees instant regret on his father’s face; nevertheless, he remembers nothing else of the seder.

On the following night’s seder, Asher drinks a little too much wine and is put to bed. He finds himself slowly drawing the contours of one of museum nudes in his mind, feeling the colors, lines, and shapes. At one point, the image spins crazily in his mind and bursts into a brilliant white light. Asher is frightened, telling himself that it really is the Other Side.

Later, on one of the intermediate days of Passover, Rivkeh tells Asher that he shouldn’t be frightened when she and Aryeh fight. People who love each other sometimes fight, and Aryeh yells because he’s frightened. He has many responsibilities and now fears that Asher might “become a goy.” Asher just asks if he can go to the museum again. Rivkeh sighs and asks him to wait until Aryeh returns to Europe.

The next time Asher hears his parents fighting, he tries to promise himself he’ll go to Vienna, but he knows he can’t. Later, he asks his mother why they fought. Rivkeh explains that Aryeh wanted her to promise she wouldn’t let Asher go to the museum. She told Aryeh she couldn’t promise the impossible. Nevertheless, she’s not sure that Aryeh is wrong. Asher doesn’t respond. He goes to the museum later that day. He stares at one of the Jesus paintings, wondering how the artist made the wounds so lifelike.

Asher remembers little else about that Passover—just “the menacing darkness” that fills the formerly beloved festival. He notices how gray and burdened his father looks. He knows that Aryeh has his own dream for which he needed “all his strength. Interference drained his strength.” Asher is one such interference. When there’s another quarrel after Passover, Asher feels both fearful of his father and angry at his own helplessness. After the holiday, he isn’t unhappy to see Aryeh leave.

Asher chooses the two subjects Aryeh cares about most—Talmud and Bible—and begins to study them. He draws a bit less than before. He uses the memory of his parents’ quarrels as motivation. His mother, the mashpia, and his teachers are pleased.

In June, weeks pass without a letter from Aryeh. By the end of that month, Rivkeh is sick with worry. Asher finds her chanting Psalms in front of the window in the middle of the night. He hears her begging Yaakov for intercession. Finally, a few days later, the Rebbe calls with the news that Aryeh is safe in Vienna. Asher says that his father must have been in Russia. Rivkeh doesn’t reply, but she happily suggests that they go to Prospect Park and then the museum.

They spend summer in the Berkshires. Asher paints, draws, and studies Talmud and Bible. His mother seems happy. When his father returns from Vienna in the fall, his eyes “glittered with achievement.” Yeshivos are opening in Vienna and Paris. During Succos, Aryeh asks Asher if he might want to come to Vienna next year. But Asher is afraid to be where Aryeh is, “for he had set himself up as an adversary to me.”

The following summer, Rivkeh sails to Europe to join Aryeh. She is working on her doctorate, and she misses Aryeh. That summer Asher lives with Uncle Yitzchok and spends a lot of time at Yudel Krinsky’s store. Yudel is now remarried and no longer wears his kaskett. Asher runs errands for both of them.

That summer, three new Russian Ladover families move to Uncle Yitzchok’s street. They look bewildered and fearful. Asher approaches one of the boys his age and greets him in Yiddish. When he introduces himself, the boy’s eyes narrow. He says that everyone knows the son of Reb Aryeh Lev. When Asher asks if his father helped the boy’s family escape Russia, the boy is frightened. He explains that in Russia, pious-looking Jews might be government spies. He won’t tell Asher anything more.