well i read this book as well as the gift of asher lev well before the end of the month…so much before that i forgot to get on and comment. so here i am a month late. but here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth.

first, do you have to give yourself over completely to your art form? is it not possible to put any sort of filter on and say, no, i’m not going to hurt the people around me? for example, i have tried writing about relationships between mothers and daughters, mothers in law and daughters in law but i just know things would come out that would be hurtful to them. And to me that’s just too high of a price to pay for art. does that mean i can’t write anything worthwhile? or does it just mean i’ll never be really good?

i also didn’t see why asher couldn’t have either kept the crucifixion pieces out of the show or at least told his parents about them so they wouldn’t go. He could have just said I painted crucifixions. and that would have been enough to avoid them seeing their family in giant christian symbolism on exhibit.

also i recommend reading the gift of asher lev–the first book deals with his turbulent coming of age and coming of artist period. the sequel shows how he lives with himself as the person/artist he has become–also husband and father, and how those relationships affect/are affected by his art.

i enjoyed all the insightful comments. art to me is a strong subject to address when it comes to religion.i would rather discuss asher as a boy, as man,as the artist he is.

yes i would agree that he is a little crazy. i believe that all the great artists were what we consider a little ‘off.’ to give yourself so fully to a cause and sacrifice everything you are takes more than normal people like us are willing to give. or are even capable of i believe. asher was born an artist. i believe asher suffered greatly under the hand of his father’s unacceptance and mother’s early illness.
i think he turned out amazingly well considering.

the one thing about his father that really bothered me, was his constantly reference to control and animals. he always told asher that only animals cannot control themselves, and yet he could not bring himself to understand his own son. he couldn’t see him the way others did. he acted like he tried, but couldn’t ‘control’ that he didn’t understand.

overall though…
i fell in love with asher’s art. i felt like i traveled with him in europe and grew close to jacob. i feel like i literally sat and marvelled at the pieta and david.
asher had a very hard life, and a very blessed life,and i think deep down,heknew he could never stay at home anymore. to be a true artist, he needed the separation. not only from his father, but almost from his past.
but i do love this book. thank you for the much needed exposure.

i think your last few sentences are quite insightful. i don’t have any answers to your questions, but the fact that you were able to articulate the questions seems to be the most important element.

i know that there are certain things i would never write about because i would betray my faith (eg the temple). but there are things (eg, my mission) that i have written about and people have found offensive. i don’t know how to equate that with the difference between nudes and the crucifixion but there seems to be a connection…

Now for another idea that I know is biased by my background. I am much more bothered by the fact that Asher would display the nudes than the crucifixion, and that his community could seem to pretend he didn’t display nudes, but would not forgive him for the crucifixion paintings. I may not agree with his father’s opinion, but to me opposition to a nude is a moral stance. If that is against the faith, then displaying such a thing seems indicate that art is more important to Asher than following the faith. I’m not sure that Asher agrees that a nude is against his religion, but his father certainly does and this creates a rift between them that I can understand. However, the community’s complete rejection of him for using the symbol of another religion is much more baffling to me. I could have misinterpreted this, but it seemed to me like the issue wasn’t so much that he portrayed his mother’s anguish, but that he had used a Christian symbol to do it. I don’t mean to judge another faith so harshly, but it seems like an unwillingness to listen to the meaning behind the symbol of a faith other than your own, and the apparent rejection of the possibility of anything good coming from it simply helps increase the rift that they already feel with the rest of the world. Yes, their people had been persecuted for many years, and yes not too long before the setting for this book, too many Christians had sat idly by during the Holocaust and not done anything. However, completely casting off anything related to Christianity seems at best close-minded and at worst, an excellent way to increase the divide between them and those of other faiths. I suppose that I am biased because I too come from a faith that claims to be the only true Church; the place for God’s chosen people.

Yet, the one thing that I have learned more and more over the past few years is how much good can be found elsewhere. I suppose that the one thing I like the least about the culture that can surround my faith is when people make the mistake that believing they belong to the “true Church” means believing that truth cannot be found everywhere. In fact, I feel like there are some truths that can’t be learned without venturing elsewhere and not to do so is giving up the opportunity of learning those wonderful things. It was probably me projecting my own struggles on Asher, but in him I saw someone who struggled to find the difference between his culture and his faith–someone who sought to make a separation between them that no one around him did. This seems like the only way to remain true to his religion as well as true to his art. So this may seem a bit contradictory to what I’ve seen before, but I’m trying to sort out what I feel the difference between faith, tradition, and culture is; what Asher may see those three things as; and how his Hasidic community did or did not separate those three concepts. Any ideas?