Kasrylewka

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Inside Kasrilevke is full of the special magic of Sholom Aleichem: the clear view, the kind of knowing that would break the spirit if it were not reported with a wry smile and a loving heart. It is written in the form of a guidebook to the author's small, legendary home town, revisited after years in the great world. The growing town has streetcars ("Where do we start?" "Today"). It has hotels ("But if it isn't just so, don't blame me"). It has restaurants, bars, a theater ("The one and only Adler from America"). But before these monstrous modernities befell the author, they had befallen the townspeople themselves, whose survival had come to depend on an indignant acceptance of indignity from fellow man and, let it be whispered, from God Himself. Ben Shahn's delightful drawings are not mere illustrations of incidents and a way of life; the people of the town are realized and project themselves off the page.