My Name is Asher Lev: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

A week after Passover, they get word from Aryeh, who is safely in Vienna. Later, that summer, Rivkeh travels to Europe to be with her husband, and Asher moves into Uncle Yitzchok’s house. Asher spends the summer traveling to Jacob Kahn’s studio two or three times a week. It’s an oppressively hot summer in New York. At Uncle Yitzchok’s house, Asher paints wearing an undershirt and his ritual fringes; at the studio, he paints stripped to the waist.

One day Jacob Kahn tells Asher that there are only two ways of painting the world—the geometric approach favored by artists like Picasso, and the way which “sees the world as a flower,” favored by those like Chagall. Kahn himself is a “geometrician,” because he sees the world as “filled with lines and angles […] wild and raging and hideous,” filling him with disgust rather than joy. He tells Asher that someday he will understand this. When he sees Asher painting a classmate (the pimply-faced boy), he tells Asher that the painting “reeks of cowardice and indecision.” He must paint the truth about his hatred. Later, Kahn looks at Asher’s revised painting and tells him, “I would not like to be hated by you, Asher Lev.”

One day in July, Kahn takes Asher to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and they spend the day looking at paintings of crucifixions. The next day, Asher tells Jacob that he doesn’t want to see any more crucifixions. Kahn is angry. He tells Asher that he’s not telling him to paint crucifixions, but that he must understand the form in order to become a great artist. He will also have to see resurrections, nativities, Greek and Roman gods, and nudes, because “this is the world you want to make sacred.”

One Sunday morning at the end of July, Asher comes to Kahn’s apartment and finds a young woman there. Kahn explains that Asher will draw this woman in the nude. Asher is trembling and feels a “choking heaviness.” Kahn gently but firmly explains that “the human body is a glory of structure and form,” and that when an artist paints it, he is “a battleground between intelligence and emotion,” a battle which yields some of art’s greatest masterpieces. The Rebbe had asked Kahn never to make Asher paint this way. However, Kahn believes that to try to become a great artist without mastering the nude “is like attempting to be a great Hasidic teacher without knowledge of the Kabbalah.” After a long silence, Asher agrees to try.

Asher is bathed in sweat as he begins drawing the girl, and his first attempt is shamefully bad. But Asher spends the whole day drawing the girl repeatedly in various poses. Kahn shows Asher the vast improvement between the first and last drawings. He tries to tell Asher that he is not “defiled.” Asher, dazed and feeling “unclean,” isn’t convinced. But he draws the girl again on subsequent Sundays, and it becomes easier.

Aryeh returns to the United States in the fall. He is gaunt, gray, and limping. When he and Asher finally talk, Aryeh says that his work in Europe “was nearly creation out of nothing,” but is beginning to succeed. He tells Asher that he is still “not reconciled” to what Asher is doing. He says that the Ribbono Shel Olom is “sometimes unkind.” He doesn’t understand why God couldn’t have kept the sitra achra away from Asher. He asks that Asher never forget his people. When Asher asks Aryeh if he was in Russia, Aryeh says that some questions should not be asked. Looking at one of the nude drawings on Asher’s desk, he said that  he, too, has questions he doesn’t ask.

Later that fall, Rivkeh tells Asher that Aryeh needs her. She asks if Asher could move in with Uncle Yitzchok next year so that she could accompany and support her husband full time. Asher doesn’t want to. Rivkeh says that they’ll discuss it later, telling him, “you are not the only member of this family with special needs.”

That fall and winter, Rivkeh misses Aryeh and is lonely when Asher spends his evenings studying art reproductions in the library. She finishes her dissertation and tells Asher that the university is asking her about her plans for next year. Asher continues to refuse to consider the possibility of Rivkeh leaving New York. Asher dreams about his mythic ancestor again and, overwhelmed by confused feelings, struggles to paint.

Rivkeh continues to bring up plans for next year. She tells Asher that it might be time for him to concern himself with others’ needs. He dreams again of his mythic ancestor shouting at him, and the next day, he falls asleep in class and is mocked by the teacher. The pimply-faced boy starts leaving cruel limericks about Asher and famous Jewish artists inside Asher’s Gemorra. Kahn tells Asher that his attempts at expressing his feelings are producing failures; he should spend some time painting still-lifes and self-portraits instead.

One night, Asher looks out at the familiar parkway and thinks that his street feels “quietly hostile […] as if resentful of my journeys away from it and of the alien skills” he brings back from Kahn’s studio. Then he has a sudden idea. He draws a scene from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, and he places his classmate’s pimply face on the faces of all Michelangelo’s damned, tormented dead. He makes a similar drawing the next day and places both of these in the pimply-faced boy’s Gemorra. The boy says nothing to him, but he stops tormenting Asher. At Kahn’s, Asher makes a painting of the boy’s face when he saw one of the drawings. Kahn proclaims this painting “evil and excellent.”

Rivkeh tells Asher that this summer, she will be moving to Europe for a year to be with Aryeh. She becomes angry when Asher pleads with her to stay. When Asher talks to Kahn about it, Kahn tells him that there’s only so long the world will indulge him. Later, Asher is again summoned to meet with the Rebbe. The Rebbe tells him that although Jacob Kahn can make him an artist, only Asher can “make of [himself] a Jew.” He tells Asher he must accept his parents’ decision and behave respectfully toward his aunt and uncle. He concludes that Asher is entering the world of the “Other Side” and must be careful. As Asher goes home, and throughout the next weeks, he feels that his street has turned “cold.”

As Rivkeh defends her dissertation and prepares for the journey to Europe, she seems “filled with new energy” and “fulfilled.” During these weeks, Asher paints many paintings of himself and his mother. Jacob Kahn watches in silence. When Asher bids his mother goodbye at the dock, he tells her, “Have a safe journey, mama.” Then he goes back to his street and spends awhile looking up at the living room window. Finally he walks to his Uncle Yitzchok’s house.