- Asher starts elementary school in a yeshiva in Crown Heights, which proves to be kind of a mixed bag for him. He likes his teachers and his classmates okay, but he's really not that great at school (especially math) and suffers because he's convinced himself that his artistic gift is a bad thing.
- Asher's mother wonders why he's stopped drawing, and he doesn't really have an answer for her other than that he believes it comes from the sitra achra.
- Meanwhile, she's entered college, determined to resume Yaakov's work where he left off. She becomes increasingly freaked out at the prospect of anyone she loves meeting with harm, which leads to her being kind of a high-strung helicopter parent and yelling at Asher whenever he comes home late from school.
- Aryeh gets ahold of the news that Stalin—or "The Russian Bear," as his friends call him—has murdered six Jewish writers. The news is devastating for the Crown Heights Hasidic community, and it makes Asher think about Siberia and murder more than is probably healthy for a kid in elementary school.
- Aryeh takes a business trip to Boston and Rivkeh spends the entire time panicking about the murdered writers and Aryeh's safe return home. The Lev house is a super stressful place, to say the least.
- In order to avoid the stress of his home life, Asher begins to visit Yudel Krinsky's stationery shop more and more after school.
- Asher pays a particularly long visit to Yudel's shop in the middle of a snowstorm and gets home late and his mom basically turns into the Incredible Raging Hulk and tells him he could've died.