![]() ![]() ![]() Home life is not easy: his mother is ill, and his father travels a great deal, delivering messages for their beloved Rebbe, or spiritual leader. Instead of concentrating in class, he draws - sometimes on the pages of sacred books, to the horror of his teachers at the Yeshiva. Everything he saw along the streets of New York, every person, comes in his head as something he sees in a particular way and wants to depict. From a young age, he discovered in himself not just a talent, but an overwhelming passion, for drawing. We first encounter Asher Lev, whose story this is, as a young boy who is growing up as a member of this community. As they are a highly enclosed group, this novel by Chaim Potok offers a welcome window into one such community, fictionalised as the Ladover, but based on the Chabad of Brooklyn Heights in New York. Stemming from religious revivals in the 18th century in what is now Western Ukraine, they are the fastest-growing form of Judaism, and, in Jerusalem, for example, form more than one third of the population. Men wear long black coats, unusual hats (sometimes of fur), and have curls ( payot) dangling down their cheeks, while women are also in black and wear wigs. MOST people will at some point have seen Hasidic Jews with their distinctive form of dress. ![]()
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