Asher Lev Just as One

¶ … Asher Lev

Just as one can develop a sociological analysis of the development of a person in the environment in which he or she was raised and make certain judgments about what influenced that development and how, so can one do the same thing with a fictional character, assuming the author has provide sufficient data that can be used for this purpose. A novel that is detailed enough to make such an analysis and that also involves an interesting milieu in which the central character is raised is My Name Is Asher Lev by Potok (2003).

Lev is a fully developed character living in a community that is largely unfamiliar to most Americans, the Ladover Hassidic community in Brooklyn. This is a highly religious community, but it exists within the mixed religious world of New York and especially within the more secular world of that city. Asher himself will walk the line between the religious and the secular throughout his life, even more so than might have been true because of his predilection for art and the art world. His talent separates him from his parents and is a point of contention between him and them as well as between him and his Jewish community. The leader of that community is the Rebbe, for whom Asher's father works. Asher is formed by his childhood experiences to a great degree and especially by his relationship with his mother and father, but that relationship is strained as he grows to manhood and exhibits his artistic ability and his desire to be an artist.

Indeed, as this novel shows, the individual lives in many communities in a lifetime, not merely by moving from one place to another but by being part of the different worlds of work, family, community, friends, and more. The conflict Asher experiences is multiplied by his intense desire to please his father against his intense need to be an artist, which is not a decision that pleases his father. Asher is also in conflict with some in the religious community, for that community is formed around certain ideas of conformity and the placement of the community above the individual, while the world of the artist focuses on individual expression and also on the community of art as a higher calling and a more pervasive influence on how choices are made.

Asher's development as a human being follows the normal course as set down by theorists of developmental psychology. Piaget and his theory are explained by Miller (1989), and he notes that the stages of development described by Piaget shows how the child's knowledge of the world changes as his or her cognitive system develops, a view that also holds that knowledge is biased. This means that experience is always filtered through the current understanding of the child, and this understanding also changes over time. Miller says that "as the mind develops, it becomes more in tune with reality" (Miller, 1989, p. 36). Piaget's theory addresses how the organism adapts to its environment, showing both a biological and psychological adjustment as Piaget shows how cognitive growth is like embryological growth as "an organized structure becomes more differentiated over time" (Miller, 1989, p. 37).

Another developmental explanation was offered by Erikson (1963). Piaget addresses childhood development, while Erikson offers a pscyhosocial theory of development that describes a series of eight stages in the development of the individual throughout life. This developmental structure is based on the interaction of biological, psychological, and social processes, and it is the interaction of these processes that accounts for the "psycho" (inner) "social" (external) character of development. The stages are indeed described by Erikson as psychosocial "crises," and the reason for this is that they are intended to represent periods when the individual is particularly sensitive or vulnerable to certain developmental issues. Each of the crisis stages is described in terms of its positive outcome or strength "versus" its negative outcome or weakness. Each stage relates to every other stage. Erikson's formulation of the eight stages has roots in Freud, but Erikson has added various innovative dimensions. Freud presented an important model of psychosexual development, and he felt that during the first five years of life, the individual was confronted with a series of conflicts which he or she would resolve with varying degrees of success. Freud did not emphasize development to the same extent after this first five-year period, and Erikson has tried to conceptualize these later periods in greater detail and has also developed an analysis of man's over-all development in these eight stages.

In the eight stages cited by Erikson, each critical encounter with the environment will dominate at a particular period in the life cycle. The conflicts are not completely separated -- all eight conflicts are present in the individual at birth, and each of the conflicts continues to play a role, if a minor one, throughout life. The first stage is basic trust vs. mistrust as the infant must develop sufficient trust to let its mother out of sight without anxiety. The second stage is that of autonomy vs. shame and doubt, and this sense is usually developed through bladder and bowel control and parallels the anal stage of traditional psychoanalytic theory. The third stage is that of initiative vs. guilt, the last conflict experienced by the preschool child and occurring during what Freud called the phallic stage. The child now must learn to appropriately control feelings of rivalry for the mother's attention and develop a sense of moral responsibility. The fourth stage is industry vs. inferiority, the conflict beginning with school life or the onset of formal socialization. The child must apply himself to his lesson, begin to feel some sense of competence relative to peers, and face his own limitations if he is to emerge as a healthy individual. The fifth stage is identity vs. role confusion. Identity here refers to the confidence that others see us as we see ourselves, and if an identity is not formed, role confusion may occur, often characterized by an inability to select a career or to further educational goals. The sixth stage is that of intimacy vs. isolation. It occurs in young adulthood when people are expected to be ready for true intimacy and when they must develop cooperative social and occupational relationships with others and select a mate. The seventh stage is that of generativity vs. stagnation -- the individual needs to be needed and to assist the younger members of society, and generativity is concerned with guiding the next generation. The last stage is that of ego integrity vs. despair, and this is the time when the way the other conflicts were decided has an influence. If the preceding conflicts were not suitably handled, despair may result in later life. If the person has developed each of the adaptive qualities of the other seven stages, he or she will be able to become psychosocially adjusted and have a lasting sense of integrity.

Asher in the novel passes through the fourth stage as he goes to school, torn in his thinking by the conflict that often shows between the secular teachings of school and the religious teaching of the Rebbe. The boy is vulnerable because of the illness of his other and the inflexibility of his father. The boy learns a great deal from his father, notably gaining an appreciation of Russia and a trust in the Rebbe. The childhood of Asher as described by Potok shows the sort of developmental changes cited first by Piaget and later by Erikson. Asher's environment as a child is enclosed by his parents and his community, though there are always certain forces that are more internal and that manifest as he observes the world and expresses a certain artistic sense others in his community do not have. His growing awareness of his own difference is part of the environment that shapes him. In part, he gains this awareness by his own observation, but he also gains it as others, notably his parents and the Rebbe, suggest how he should think when they perceive that he thinks differently than they themselves, that he sees the world less in their religious terms and more in is own aesthetic terms. The thinking of the boy was shaped by his early experiences with his parents, and his devotion to his parents leads in later life to his deep-seated desire to please his father.

The boy's early years are spent with his parents in a colony as his father works with the Russians and the boy begins to show the artistic talent that will shape his life later. Bowlby (1988) notes the way Freud and others saw childhood as the starting point for mental health later in life, though he also notes how research into his idea has been difficult and disappointing. More recently, developmental psychologists have used an ethologically based theory of socioemotional bonds to test these ideas and Bowlby's own research suggests that a person's degree of vulnerability to stressors is strongly influenced by the development and current state of his or her intimate relationships. Such relationships in childhood begin with the parents, and for Asher, these early relationships are also significant later, as might be expected.

However, as Potok shows in this novel, for someone like Asher, the importance of childhood bonds and of later intimate bonds are themselves stressed by cultural conflicts between the Hasidic community in its isolation and the larger American society surrounding it. For Asher, the conflict is between the more controlled religious environment of the community and the more liberal environment of the art world he joins. What Potok shows about this particular conflict might seem very different from what others experience, others who are not part of such a strict religious background and who are not artists. However, children always find a conflict between the circumscribed world of their immediate family and the world they join as they strike out on their own. This conflict is often portrayed in terms of different time periods, with the parents tied to a past that the children see as no longer applicable, while the parents see their children interacting with a world that is new in many ways and that the parents may not fully understand.

This sort of conflict is generational, and how it affects development differs from theory to theory. Bruner (1986) points out that there are many different ways of explaining the same processes and the same outcome:

To take an example, all theories must choose a particular way of dealing with the balance between, let us say, inner and outer determination of developmental change. Piaget (1952) deals with it as a resultant balance of the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Freud emphasizes a number of quite different processes -- like the compromise of an earlier primary pleasure principle and a later secondary reality one, or the requirement of maintaining defenses that will both inhibit unacceptable impulses and yet permit their expression in a symptomatic if hidden manner. Werner (1948) is more complicated than either of the others and proposes that inner and outer determination operate jointly at all phases of growth, however syncretic, however lacking in overall integration (Bruner, 1986, p. 19).

Part of the reality is that "we create an environment by the invocation of symbolic texts that stand as constituted realities. By the use of principally linguistic means -- performatives, presuppositional loadings, and other pragmatic devices as well as by the use of myths and other ontic devices -- we create an implicit world such as we think one ought to be. As Geertz puts it, we create public meanings to which we then insist upon adhering. When we are in doubt about the particulars, we negotiate explicit versions of implicit meanings" (Bruner, 1986, p. 21). Asher's parents and others in the community do this from an adult perspective and then expect that the child will accept what he is told about these symbolic texts. They may then be disconcerted and even antagonistic when the child does not do this but instead brings his own experiences, both internal and external, to a different interpretation of these texts. Asher would do this as a matter of course, but he does this even more deeply because of his particular artistic sensibilities. These sensibilities were noted by his mother while his much-traveled father was away working for the Rebbe, and she helped in his personal development by buying him materials for his drawing and painting. This increased his conflict with his farther and the community once the father returned, for the father saw Asher's gift as demonic, an idea increased when his son would draw unclothed figures and other subjects the father saw as non-religious.

Interestingly, while the Rebbe at first agrees with the father, he changes his view and sees the gift as something that needs to be developed, which is why he puts the boy in touch with the non-observant Jew artist Jacob Kahn. Kahn himself has been shaped by the same community that is shaping Asher, and he also demonstrates in his denial of that community how a cultural conflict develops and influences the decisions made and the way the artist expresses a view of the world. The way the community reacts to and influences Asher shows that Asher also has an effect on the community. He clearly affects the Rebbe. The community affects the boy not only in his early development but later, for he always carries with him the effects of his upbringing and of the interaction he had with the community. As one group of researchers into developmental issues notes, this happens as "people [are] engaged in sociocultural endeavors with other people, working with and extending cultural tools and practices inherited from previous generations. As groups of people develop through their shared involvement, they also contribute to transforming the cultural tools, practices and institutions of the activities in which they engage" (Rogoff and Chavajay, 1995, p. 871). Individuals also have that sort of effect, and the influence of the artist is magnified through the work he or she producers and the reaction of others to that work. This is a lesson Asher learns as he begins to express himself more fully in his works, aided in his development by Kahn and the factors that shaped that man early in life and more recently as he has come to terms with the cultural conflicts he has experienced.

Asher's artistic development after meeting Kahn follows much the same course as that of Kahn, and it does so as Asher learns to be true to himself more than to the community. At first, he produces works that make even his father proud, but ultimately he begins to produce works true to his own vision but so outside the community that he is finally banished from it and estranged from the parents he wants so to please as well. The conflict of the budding artist in school and at home is similar to what observers write about other people who try to fit into a community when they are different. In some ases, these differences are cultural, as with children from Korea now living in America (Kim, Kim, & Rue, 1997), Chinese children in America (Lung & Sue, 1997), or Asian children from India (Ranganath & Ranganath, 1997). The differences can be racial, as with children in Harlem in New York (Williams & Kornblum, 1991). The children might be different because of their home background, as in a study by Morrison-Dore, Kauffman, Nelson-Zlupko, & Granfort (1996) of children of families with a history of drug abuse.

Another sort of isolated group is represented in a study by Belkin (2004), who describes the problems faced in the educational system by child suffering from cerebral palsy. His father wanted to assure that his son could fit into a normal classroom, essentially to "find a way to fit into a world that often seems to resist him" (p. 40). The process is called inclusion, meaning to make a person with a disability a part of the class. The process goes beyond mainstreaming by "rearranging the class -- both the physical space and the curriculum -- to include him" (p. 40).

The sort of difference faced by this child is clearly greater in most respects than anything Asher faced, and the boy's differences were physical and clear to all who would meet him. In his case, his mind fit into the culture of the classroom, while his body served as a feature that isolated him and made it more difficult for him. Asher cannot rearrange the classroom or the curriculum to fit his way of thinking, and instead the effort made for him, as with most children, is to change his thinking to fit the class. On some level, society sees education as preparing children to fit into the social order as it exists, and the intent of a sub-group like the Hasidic community in Brooklyn is to prepare children to fit into that particular community, with some concession to the requirements of the larger society outside the community based on law and custom and pressure brought to bear for conformity to, say, accepted American values for a largely secular democracy. Asher does nto rebel against this education so much as come to recognize slowly that part of it does not apply to him and that his particular talent and the mind-set that goes with it is a need not being addressed by the community in which he lives.

Of course, ultimately that community does give the boy a boost when the Rebbe recognizes the value of his talent and introduces him to Kahn. In that sense, Asher is able to reshape the curriculum to meet his needs, though there is always a sense of the forbidden about art because of the attitude of his father more than the Rebbe or anyone else in this community. The way Asher introduces himself in the novel might suggest a sardonic attitude toward the way his community views him, though the fact that the disaffection of this community with him hurts him is evident from a reading of the rest of the book. He states first that he is an observant Jew, thus solidifying his position as a rightful member of the community even if the community has rejected him. At the same time, he agrees with some of his critics that "observant Jews do not paint crucifixions" and indeed "do not paint at all" (Potok, 2003, p. 3). He also implies that his community is wrong about him and yet adamant in expressing a wrongheaded view of him and his work:

So strong words are being written and spoken about me, myths are being generated: I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years (Potok, 2003, p. 3).