Extremes Collide in My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim PotokIn My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok writes about a young boy from a Hasidic community of Landover in Brooklyn who is an excellent artist. Asher journeys through his childhood clinging to his art, but when his art interferes with his religious studies, Asher's two worlds, art and Torah, collide. Potok deliberately chooses the extreme icons and symbols of secular life, such as the world of art, on the one hand, and of Judaism, the Hasidim and the Rebbe, on the other hand, to intensify the contrast between them, because he wants to shape the characters into the visions he has and show how different the two worlds are and how they conflict and interact. The way Potok sets up My Name is Asher Lev is to bring the two worlds of Judaism and secularism into conflict. He does this using many key icons and symbols from both lifestyles. It uses extreme Jewish symbols and symbolic systems, such as Hasidism, the Rebbe, Asher's father, the Gemara, Shabbos, and highly symbolic holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Passover, to represent a barrier between Asher, his community and the rest of the world. . He then uses extreme secular symbols such as Russia, art, and in art, crucifixions, nudes, and Asher's artistic mentor Jacob Kahn to show the radical differences between the two. At one point (in Book 3, Chapter 10), Jacob says to Asher, “You're too religious to be an abstract expressionist…”… “We're uncomfortable in the universe. We are rebellious and individualistic. Accidents are welcome in painting. You are emotional and sensual, but you are also rational. This is your past in Landover...." Potok makes the Hasidim seem like a dying culture by telling stories about them in the past, and much of Asher's awareness of his heritage, his dreams and of his perceptions of his grandfather (chapter 3, p. 98) "He came to me that night, out of the woods, my mythical ancestor, immense, mountainous, dressed in his dark caftan and his lined cap. of fur, making his way through the trees of his Russian master's domain, the earth trembling, the mountains quivering. , thunder in his voice." As for the other extreme throughout the book, there is an ongoing conflict within Asher between what is expected and allowed from an artistic point of view, and what is deemed unacceptable by his father, Asher's main religious influence..