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Core Book: My Name Is Asher Lev

art for an unfinished world

We invite you to read with our students, staff, and faculty the novel My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, as a part of Wheaton College’s Core Book program.

The Core Book program fosters a shared experience across the campus community as we read, reflect upon, and discuss together a significant work that highlights themes of Wheaton’s Christ at the Core general education curriculum.

Join us in reading Chaim Potok’s fascinating story of a young Jewish boy's search for belonging, meaning, belief, and his artistic vocation. Asher Lev’s dual identities as a Hasidic Jew and talented artist created tensions within his home and close-knit community. His story also introduces us to postwar tensions devout Jewish communities faced. What does it mean to be Jewish? What does it mean to be an artist? Can an artist be a faithful member of a deeply religious community? How should parents nurture their children’s faith and gifts? Can faith and art come together or encourage one another? Potok offers the reader an extended meditation on how religious communities practice spirituality together and interact with the broader culture. We invite you to read with us as we ask how our own Christian faith might shape and inform our imaginations and engagement with art.

 

Why My Name Is Asher Lev?

My Name is Asher Lev prompts us to consider the tensions artists face in pursuing their vocational calling within faith communities. We will see through a child’s eyes his struggle to live out his Jewish faith, please his father, and create the art his community cannot appreciate or understand. Potok’s novel also reminds us of the many ways God invites us to encounter his truth and beauty. Human creativity and the act of making music or art can help orient us towards God and encourage true hope, even as we seek to make sense of the ugliness of injustice and suffering. As we read together this account of bringing faith and art together, may we be open to the possible call to look for ways to make music or art as an expression of our beliefs and a way to respond faithfully to our own experiences.

Pencil sketch of a wooden drawing figure reading a book
Reflection and Discussion Guide - My Name Is Asher Lev

David W. McNutt, Ph.D., Associate Lecturer of Core Studies

Tiffany Eberle Kriner, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English

Start: Part 1 - Epigraph through Chapter 2

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Contact Us

core.book@wheaton.edu