My Name is Asher Lev, a novel by Chaim Potok, follows the growth of an artist from childhood through adulthood. Potok took on the eyes of an artist to create his protagonist and it’s through Asher Lev’s eyes that I learned to attend to light—and to dark.

If I read My Name is Asher Lev six times, I probably read The Chosen twelve times. The Chosen taught me to examine the gift of silence and the suffering silence can bring. The use of silence to teach. The use of intermediaries to soften the suffering.

It's also an historical novel, educating the reader about the mores of a very contained culture and about the slow, devastating impact of the discovery of the breadth and depth of the holocaust as the details poured in to the U.S. at the end of WWII.

The book is an exquisite portrait of a friendship.