My Name is Asher Lev - Part 2

Here are a few more insights I gained from reading My Name is Asher Lev:

"We studied the meaning of the verse in Proverbs 'The candle of God is the soul of man.'  The souls of Jews are like the flame of a candle, the mashpia said.  The flame burns upward; it seeks to be parted from the wick in order to unite with its source above, in the universal element of fire.  Similarly, the soul of the Jew yearns to separate itself and depart from the body in order to unite with the Master of the Universe."  I liked this imagery because it showed to me how much our souls want to be with our Heavenly Father.  We have to get past the "natural man", but once we do that, we won't be held back by our bodies and we can better communicate and share our lives with Him.  I saw a poem recently about babies and part of the reason they cry is because they miss being with our Heavenly Father.  It made me tear up because I don't want my little boy to be sad.  I want him to be happy.  But it's partly up to me to make sure that he lives worthy of being able to return back to His presence.

"There are two ways of painting the world...One is the way of Greece and Africa, which sees the world as a geometric design.  The other is the way of Persia and India and China, which sees the world as a flower."  This isn't really a gospel insight, more of an art insight.  I've never thought about things like that before, but it is very true!

 "I remember that the first time I saw the Michelangelo Pieta...I was an observant Jew, yet that block of stone moved through me like a cry, like the call of seagulls over morning surf..."  The picture below is the Pieta that Chaim Potok is referring too.  It is also called The Deposition.  The figures are Jesus in the center being held my the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene with either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea standing behind.  I hope that I can see works of art like this and have it affect me as much.  The grief and pain that is showed in Jesus' face affect Asher Lev so much that, even though he is Jewish, he uses the crucifix in his greatest paintings later on.

"An observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment."  Jewish people do not use the cross to remember Christ.  In fact, they view Christ as a man with good intentions, but someone who brought many, many years of pain and suffering to the Jewish people.  In the book, Asher uses the cross to show the pain his mother felt when she had to stand between her husband and son.  The reason this touched me so much is because it helped me realize the pain and suffering Jesus went through.  So much so that in other cultures, they don't have a symbol that even comes close to showing the torment that our crucifixion does.  It makes the Atonement that much more special to me.  To realize that Christ went through so much because He loves us.  He wants us to be able to make up for our mistakes.


This is the painting the author of the book, Chaim Potok, made.  This is what he imagined "Brooklyn Crucifixion" to be.