Inside Kasrilevke

Plot

This book has charm and bite. It is full of the special magic of Sholom Aleichem, with 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. Sholom Aleichem writes Inside Kasrilevke in the form of a grobian guidebook to his small home town, revisited after years in the great world. The 28 drawings by Ben Shahn which enhance this edition recall the sort of people who lived in Sholom Aleichem's sort of town.

The growing town has street cars ("When do we start?" "Today.") It has hotels ("But if it isn't just so, don't blame me.") It has restaurants, bars, theater ("the one and only Adler from America."). But before these monstrous modernities befall teh 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.

"It is testimony to the vigor of this humor that so much of it comes through in translation; no fruther fatalistic flavor, nor more ironic note could, it seems, have been extracted from an infinite variety of situations, from a world in which 'love of life' is allied so closely to 'survival.' "