Such relationships in childhood begin with the parents, and for Asher, these early relationships are also significant later, as might be expected.

However, as Potok shows in this novel, for someone like Asher, the importance of childhood bonds and of later intimate bonds are themselves stressed by cultural conflicts between the Hasidic community in its isolation and the larger American society surrounding it. For Asher, the conflict is between the more controlled religious environment of the community and the more liberal environment of the art world he joins. What Potok shows about this particular conflict might seem very different from what others experience, others who are not part of such a strict religious background and who are not artists. However, children always find a conflict between the circumscribed world of their immediate family and the world they join as they strike out on their own. This conflict is often portrayed...
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