"It isn't fair, it isn't right!" screams Tessie, a girl unjustly sentenced to death in "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. These words may also have been uttered by Aryeh Lev, the protagonists father in My Name is Asher Lev by Chiam Potok. Aryeh, a pious Jew, was born into an unjust anti-Semitic world that oppresses his people, places the weight of his people upon his shoulders and blights him with an obstinate son.
             Aryeh Lev has lived in an anti-Semitic world all his life. Aryeh's father "was killed by a drunken axe wielding peasant." (pg 5) It is unjust beyond a doubt for Aryeh to be born into a world "that hates Jews." (pg 358) Aryeh was not only born into an Anti-Semitic world but into a country with a history of anti-Semitic policy which began under the Czarist regime in which the grandfather of the Rebbe of the landover hasid movement "spent ten years in prison under." (pg 80) "But the Rebbe's father was also imprisoned under the Bolsheviks." (pg 80) The Bolshevik regime was another Russian Government who famously changed Russia to the USSR. This communist government caught Jews, "and sent them to Siberia where they perished." It is completely unjust for Aryeh to have been born into such a world.
             Disrespect for the Jewish faith was not only manifested outside Aryeh's home in the form of Anti-Semitism but, in his own home in the form of his son, Asher. Asher creates paintings that are from the "Sitra Achra" or other side. Asher draws a hideous picture of the Rebbe, that portrays the Rebbe as, "Evil...Threatening...and about to hurt," (pg 124) Asher. Asher not only uses his "gift" to "make the Rebbe look like a being from the other-side," he, "defiled a Chumash," (pg 123) a sacred book of Talmudic learning. This is truly unjust toward Aryeh, a truly pious Jew, who studies th...