In attempting to portray a cohesive relationship between the sacred and secular, he humiliates his mother, definitively destroys the relationship with his father, and disgraces his entire community.

Asher receives praise for his art from the secular world, which employs the crucifix, appropriately displaying a symbolic crucifixion, although he is ostracized by his own community. However, he is not able to fuse the secular art that he creates with the sacred religiosity of his upbringing, resulting in a “core-to-core culture confrontation,” the way that a specific culture “sees the world, a way that it thinks the human experience” (Morgan 55-56). In My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok, the protagonist, Asher Lev, overcomes his “inability to maneuver and question” the beliefs associated with Ladover Judaism, through drawing and painting (Cusick 126). Thank you both for making this publication possible and for all the other countless things you have done and continue to do to support me.

Art and Crucifixions Do Not Mix: The Dichotomy of the Sacred and the SecularĪ Religious Analysis of My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potokįor Rabbi Yossi and Chanie Serebryanski.

Chaim potok asher lev