I rarely reread books, but I’ve read My Name is Asher Lev three times.

I read it first in elementary school, when my mother noticed I was stealing books from the library because my appetite couldn’t keep up with the title limit. She set out to feed my hunger herself, and Chaim Potok’s book was one of the first she handed me from her own collection.

 It grabbed me. I attended a Modern Orthodox day school but came from a conservative family. My great grandfather’s family had moved to Atlanta, Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century and since then, the family, still very much Jewish, was more likely to eat southern brisket on Passover and go out for pepperoni pizza on Friday nights than to follow Halakhah to the letter of the law.

 I was constantly grappling with the conflicting messages I received from home and school, and I was forming an identity as both a Jew and a creative person. At that age, when I read My Name is Asher Lev, I took a side. I was always rebellious in school. I didn’t understand why I had to learn Rashi text and Tanakh for half the day, and I hadn’t yet formed a value system outside of my own family.  I cared far more about my after school art class than my Hebrew classes. My mother had studied art history in Spain and I loved to come home and flip through the images in her Museo del Prado coffee table book.

At that point I hadn’t realized that many of the paintings in that museum were religious in subject and intention. It felt obvious to me that art came before all else–before religion, before family, before obligation.

In college, I reread My Name is Asher Lev. I’d since taken and absorbed what I’d learned at my Jewish day school and my community had changed from when I was a child. I attended orthodox services, kept kosher and Shabbat, and spent most of my free time in the Boston University Hillel Beit Midrash, soaking up all of the knowledge I had rebelled against when I was young.

Now, the book took on new meaning for me. I came more from the perspective of the Rebbe–and thought about how my own work and talents could serve the Jewish people. I had (and still have) a strong sense of Jewish identity and peoplehood, and I couldn’t think of anything more important than using the gifts I was given to push us forward. I used my writing (the creative tool I eventually chose to focus on) to write about Jewish life and Jewish values. I focused on honing my tools in service of my community.

Now, years after Jewish day school and years after college, I’ve found a middle ground that works for me. I may not practice as strictly as before, but I have a strong sense of Jewish identity and commitment, and together with my husband, we are creating our own Jewish household and figuring out what that looks like.

I recently reread My Name is Asher Lev. Perhaps at one point, I felt for Asher. At another, for the Rebbe. Now, when I read it, I can’t choose sides. I know what it feels like to be an artist in creation, where the whole world disappears around you and all that matters is the piece in front of you. I know what it’s like to want to give all that you have to your people, to use whatever you have to be a voice for them. But now, I also feel for the parents. I understand Aryeh the father as a man deeply committed to what he thinks is right–even when it hurts the people he loves. I understand Rivkeh the mother, as she tries to bring together two people who look at the world in such opposite ways. I understand that each character in the book is right in their own way–and that all of those truths can exist together.

Now, when I write Jewish stories, I think about all of the cast of My Name is Asher Lev–but I also think of all of the women I have been over the years. I think of the obligation I still feel toward my people to tell our stories, but I also realize that it’s ok to tell those stories as messy and complicated. I think of my obligation to my people, my religion, and to my art–but I also realize that I could read My Name is Asher Lev again and again and all of the women I have been will see different truths in the work. I hope that conflict never leaves me, that I continue to grapple with understanding different perspectives and truths. It can only make me a better artist and Jew. 

Find it: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

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Riv Begun is a fantasy writer originally from Atlanta, Georgia. She is a POSSE Foundation alumni. She has been published in Format.Papier. Slippage Lit, and various Jewish publications. She writes strange things, weird short fiction, and Young Adult novels inspired by Jewish magic and folktales. She can be found on Twitter at @BegunRiv, Instagram at @RivBegun and at her website, rivbegun.com where she has a monthly newsletter.

I never write fan mail.

I do not read memoirs.

Except for the one time I did both.

I was a high school student so anxious about my future I probably resembled a bag full of nerves in a dress. Every day, I would rehash the same internal debate like a record on repeat. Did I want a career in the arts or the sciences? Humanities or maybe social work? Characteristic of my life up to this I turned to literature to help with the struggle. I combed the library searching for something, anything, that would help me find my path in life.

That’s when I found Oliver Sacks’s memoir, Uncle Tungsten.

Many readers are familiar with Sacks’s previous work detailing some of the more fascinating cases he encountered while working as a neurologist. His formidable backlist includes Awakenings which was adapted into an award-winning movie starring Robin Williams. I, however, had never even head of that body of work. I still haven’t read it. As previously mentioned, I do not read memoirs. In fact, I hardly read nonfiction at all. But something drew me to this book.

Perhaps it was the iridescent lightbulb on the cover, perhaps it was the subtitle “Memories of a Chemical Boyhood”.  Both of these things spoke to a fascination with science that bordered on the magical. I could relate. Other girls at summer camp hung posters of pretty landscapes above their beds or plastered their walls with photos of their friends and family. I had a handmade blow up the periodic table.

Turns out, the science wasn’t the only thing in Sacks’s prose I could relate to. In between Chapters with evocative titles like “Mendeleev’s Garden” Sacks discussed growing up in a Jewish household full of religion and politics, living in the shadow cast by a siblings misfortune and attending boarding school where the other children were not always kind. The details may have varied from his life to mine, but it was easy to see myself in those stories.

It did not come as a surprise when years later I learned that Sacks suffered from severe shyness as well as prosopagnosia and that his career path was not all smooth sailing. I already somehow knew these things about him. Much as Sacks describes his boyhood self experiencing kinship with the famous scientists he studied, I had come to feel a kinship with the shy boy depicted in the memoir who related to the world and those around him through science.

It was this sense of connection, of understanding, that led me to write my first and only piece of fan mail. I had no idea how to go about sending it to him but after googling I decided to mail my missive care of Sack’s publisher. I placed it in the post and hoped I wouldn’t regret it by the time it arrived at its destination. I was not entirely sure what people typically wrote in fan mail, what would be appropriate to send such a lauded and busy physician, but I wanted to thank him for writing a book that changed my life.

I must have done a decent job conveying how life altering this text was, because a few weeks later I received a reply. In fact, my ardent teen words of gratitude prompted Sacks to break one of his own rules. He intended to respond to my handwritten note with a hand-written reply of his own. He felt this was proper etiquette, however he had recently undergone rotator cuff surgery and therefore could not properly hold the pen. Therefore, he resorted to using a typewriter. He encouraged me on my journey and wished me the best in slecting a career. He did manage to sign the letter himself but asked me to forgive the uncharacteristic nature of the signature. In short, he was every bit the gentleman scientist.

That letter remained tucked in my school binder for several years, where I could look at it for inspiration when things got rough. It was a reminder that someone like myself, Jewish, shy and never quite fitting in, could indeed find their place place. I have long ago lost track of the letter but it’s content will remain in my heart forever. 

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E Broderick is a speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys crossword puzzles, epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.