Dec 17 2012
My Name is Asher Lev
It was incredible.
The story is about a young Jewish boy who cannot suppress his need to draw. Despite his strictly religious and over-bearing father, Asher Lev paints. His family and community cannot understand him, but the head of the Hassidic community to which he belongs, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, sends Asher to study by an artist, a Mr. Kahn, whose only religion is art.
Here, Asher is exposed to nude women, crucifixions, and bounds of religious confliction. He remains religious at heart, but his mind is smashed open by his new studies.
Only when he paints his mother on a crucifix, and himself reaching for her, is Asher ostracized from his community and sent to live in Paris.
The play was so emotional, it was almost uncomfortably personal. The whole thing took place in one room, and there were only three actors. I never saw so much depth in such a tiny breadth.
I loved My Name is Asher Lev. It is a story of confliction.
What can you do when being true to yourself means turning your back on where you came from?
Where can you turn when you turned your back on everyone who cares about you?
Who can you cry to when you have made everyone else cry?
What should you do if you need to do the wrong thing??
Asher Lev cannot be a “whore to his work.” He cannot stifle the image in his art because it is who he is, and “a true artist must be faithful only to his art.”
The questions that this play challenges are real and prevalent issues, even more so now than they were in the 1920s when the story was written.
There is just so much to say about it, Everyone should see this masterful interpretation of Chaim Potok’s finest work of art.
