Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Pretty much everyone can agree that Russia in the mid-1940s and 50s wasn't exactly Disneyworld, or even Epcot. Several times throughout the book, Potok reminds us of the barren and miserable wasteland that is Russia under the rule of Josef Stalin. Russia is a place where Jewish people suffer persecution—it is also the place where Asher's family came from.
Russia and Russia-related hardships are brought up frequently in order, once again, to juxtapose the relatively safe and comfortable life Asher lives in Crown Heights with the brutal and difficult one his ancestors lived in Russia. Asher struggles to come to terms with the suffering in Russia, often through his interactions with Yudel Krinsky:
Inside my room, I lay on my bed with my eyes closed and thought about the man from Russia. I saw his face clearly: the nervous eyes, the beaked nose, the pinched features. That face had lived eleven years in a land of ice and darkness. I could not imagine what it was like to live in ice and darkness. I put my hands over my eyes. (41.1)
Much of Asher's artwork ends up being about the struggles encountered by his ancestors and contemporaries in lands less fortunate than his own.