my name is not Asher Lev

Chaim Potok writes with passion.

His characters feel intense pain and the most mournful sadness and cry out to God and occasionally encounter pleasant happiness.

His characters must be perpetually exhausted just by living. But I envy them.

They are passionate. They are fervent about their love for the Rebbe and for spreading Hasidism and for keeping the commandments. Every move is purposeful. Life is drastic choices.

I want to write that I love Chaim Potok like a grandfather. I pick up his novels like a child eager to hear a story.

He must be a professor, I think, the way he writes so much about vocation -- vocare, you might say easily. And he just might be. His bio says he has a PhD in Philosophy.

I'm surprised it's not psychology. His stuff often deals with a tension between psychology and religion. Danny snuck into the library to read Freud. Danny used his psychology training to treat the girlfriend's cousin. Asher's mom went nuts. Asher's practically nuts himself. That makes me love them more.

The characters are all devoted Hasidic Jews. What's strange is that I feel they're deeply Christian when I'm reading them. Well, it's not really strange. But it's so easy to relate to them despite the key differences in our beliefs, and they have so much to teach me about my own faith.

I admire how cut and dried their lives are. "That's forbidden." This is how we do things. It causes both pain and freedom.