ASHER LEV JOURNAL 8:

Chapter 8 of my Name is Asher Lev is, in addition to being incredibly long, is the chapter in which Asher "officially" becomes an artist, and the mystery (for me at least) of what exactly happened in chapter 7 is cleared up. Asher also starts looking at Christian things etc. with permission from his art mentor Jacob Kahn, approved by the Rebbe. A few things that I find interesting about this chapter are first off, the attitude of people around Asher now that his art has been tolerated if not quite approved by, the Rebbe, and Jacob Kahn’s attitude towards art, and toward Asher. That is what is planned to be discussed in this journal.

As mentioned in last journal, things have very suddenly changed since the Rebbe approved Jacob Kahn’s teaching of Asher. People no longer criticize Asher, they just kind of let him go about doing his own thing. They just don’t even really question his ways anymore. (Although his father is still notably upset, but doesn’t want to show it, since it is the Rebbe’s orders.) Although Asher is still most definitely a Jewish boy, he seems to be allowed to be more secular now, his rules are not as strict.

Jacob Kahn, at first, seems to be very much like Asher. In either this chapter or the last one Kahn says that his father was "a great follower of the Rebbe’s." However he (Jacob) is not a religious Jew. However, he is a Jew, and an artist. This sounds a bit familiar. So does Kahn’s drawing style, although he is much more blunt with it, unlike Asher. What I mean is both of their "best" pieces are the dark and evil type thing. Jacob seems to detest "nice" art. Etc. He thinks the only great art is the feelings which one lets out on his painting, regardless of their religious, moral beliefs etc. He says such things can not be in the art, in must be one strong thought, not one strong thought with guilt etc. Now, this is exactly how Asher has been drawing for quite some time now. He didn’t to seem to be told this. However, he fears it while Jacob wants it. And interestingly, once Asher is allowed to draw that way, even encouraged to draw that way, he seems uncomfortable, he almost starts drawing "nice" again. He seems to the first time in quite some time, just want to be a normal Hasidic boy again. This is an interesting thing to see in Asher, it is if he cannot be happy, but then again I think Kahn said somewhere that "Artists are never happy."

The outlook on the life of an artist in this book is very strange, very different, in the same way Asher’s religion is very different from my own. It is also very gloomy, rather sad look on it. Yet, it is the only thing these people would want to do. I also found the views in the book Asher read very interesting, especially the part about how the artist must "free himself." It is similar to Kahn’s view. That is about all I have to say this time around, although I don’t know what happened to the last sentence shocker this time around, it was so un-shocking I started reading the next page before realizing it was the next chapter.