“Undoubted power of camera-like observation, the God-given genius for interpretation of the sorrows and sadness of life so surely a heritage of Jew, Irish or Russian, help make this little volume a delight.”
+ Bookm 52:174 O ’20 120w + Cleveland p108 D ’20 40w
“Studies at once tentative and precocious, executed with a rare economy and a vivid understanding. Moods are evoked as if by the striking of a chord; the effect is instantaneous and sharp, yet softened with queer overtones of feeling.”
+ Dial 69:547 N ’20 50w
“‘Shalom Aleichem,’ speaking generally is a humorist, and often broadly so. Instances could be cited in which a verbal audacity, almost a horseplay in phrasing, stands out as his most striking characteristic.” C. K. Scott
+ Freeman 2:45 S 22 ’20 500w
“Perhaps the best quality of these stories is their humor, and such characters as Isshur the Beadle and Boaz the Teacher do, indeed, allowing for less breadth and vigor, justify the comparison of Rabinowitz with Dickens that has been made.”
+ Nation 111:353 S 25 ’20 180w + Spec 124:588 My 1 ’20 50w The Times [London] Lit Sup p142 F 26 ’20 50w
“It is difficult to determine whether without the species of prestige conferred by unfamiliarity of subject and idiom, the spice of strangeness imparted by the mere fact of translation, the book would arouse much more than curiosity. It is a collection of incidents in the lives of Russian Jewish children, told with perhaps too unrestrained a fluency, as the matter is usually of the slightest, but with a pervading kindness, an unshakable good humour, a pleasant if not inspired drollery, that enlist one’s sympathy.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p264 Ap 29 ’20 290w