Reviews

The Anti-Chagall: Mayer Kirshenblatt Offers a Field Guide To the Shtetl — In Technicolor, The Forward, by Gabriel Sanders, Wednesday October 24, 2007. "Kirshenblatt’s canvasses, together with a stunningly vivid text...is a marvel... Kirshenblatt’s paintings are untainted by the horrors to come. They offer a picture not of Polish Jewish life as it was before tragedy struck, but simply as it was. The book — the product at once of scholarly rigor and a boy’s sense of wonder, respect for the dead and an even greater respect for the living, ethnographic exactitude and artistic style, a yearning born of loss and a synthesis born of collaboration — is a book like no other." View printed version here.

דער פֿאָלקס־קינסטלער מאיר קירשענבלאַט / כאָטש "פּרימיטיוו" לויט די קלאַסישע סטאַנדאַרטן פֿון מאָלערײַ, האָט מאיר קירשענבלאַט אונדז געלאָזט אַ וויזועל יזכּור־בוך, וואָס איז מער ווערט פֿאַר אונדזער ירושה ווי די מײַסטערווערק אין אַ מוזיי. "Though ‘primitive’ by the classical standards of painting, Mayer Kirshenblatt has left us a visual memorial book of greater value for our heritage than the masterpieces in a museum." Itzik Gottesman's review in the Yiddish Forverts, November 19, 2007, front page of the Culture section.

Stories of prewar life in a Polish town are rescued from oblivion by a painter's brush, Los Angeles Times, Book Review Section,  by Louise Steinman, Sunday September 16, 2007. "In the Bible, Noah collects for his ark two of each species to preserve from annihilation in the Flood. In this glorious ark of a book, Mayer Kirshenblatt has accomplished a project of no less epic proportions: He has rescued from oblivion stories of his town of Apt as it lived and breathed before the war."

Through words and images, Mayer Kirshenblatt brings to life the Polish town he left in 1934, by Julie Subrin, Nextbook, November 20, 2007. ".. Though he had no formal training as an artist, he quickly found a visual language that is at once vibrant, empathetic, and simple, and dense with material evidence of Jewish Polish life ... They Called Me Mayer July is sweet, coarse, and at times devastating. We know a lot about what happened to Poland’s Jews after Kirshenblatt left, so much so that Jewish life in Poland sometimes seems to have lasted a single, nightmarish half-decade before it was utterly destroyed. Kirshenblatt didn’t witness those years, and while he doesn’t spare us the knowledge that many of the people he describes—including members of his own family—perished, he is more concerned with preserving his memories of Apt, where Jews had lived for hundreds of years, perhaps struggling but very much alive."

Vibrant works offer visual keys to culture, Contra Costa Times, by Robert Taylor, Thursday September 13, 2007."Scene by scene, street by street, family by family, the paintings nearly come to life on the museum's walls, creating something like a home movie of a vanished world."

Mayer July: Self-taught painter, 91, maps a Jewish life now lost, Jessica Werner Zack, Special to The San Francisco Chronicle, Friday September 14, 2007. "It is my mission to teach people what life was like before the war. We were poor, but we had culture, people with various professions, industry, and it is no more and never will be again. What was most important about it? Life itself!"

 Starred review in Publishers Weekly, Monday September 10, 2007:  Publisher's Weekly is very selective about the books it reviews and even more selective in starring them. Of the 45 non-fiction books reviewed on this occasion, only 4 were starred, and we were 1 of the 4: "Kirshenblatt's paintings are amazing—a cross between a childlike realism and the embroidered fantasy of memory; they convey a sense of boyhood innocence tinged with grief...This collection of pre-Holocaust memories will be a lasting contribution to our understanding of Eastern European Jewish life and culture before its destruction." 

"You know that feeling when you crack open a book, begin reading and almost immediately realize you're holding a masterpiece in your hands?  I had that rare, wonderful experience when I started reading Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust. I won't say anything about it other than: buy it now and pass it on to others. It's a beautiful thing." Dave Isay, brilliant radio documentarian of NPR fame, creator of StoryCorps, recipient of a MacCarthur genius award, and author of Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

Toronto Jewish Book Fair Features Heavy Literary Hitters by Bill Gladstone, Canadian Jewish News, October 25, 2007. "Mayer Kirshenblatt’s primitive painted canvases of the shtetl as remembered from his childhood are raw, dramatic, stirring and unforgettable."

Reviewed by Anna Dogole, History in Review, November 5, 2007: "Each painting in They Called Me Mayer July, has its own story...within the pages of this remarkable book...Together the paintings and their accompanying stories created a spirited picture of the vibrant Jewish community that once existed in Apt. This is a joyful book, one that tells the story of Apt from the viewpoint of a child who is unaware of the dark shadow that looms ahead. As such, this book is filled with a vitality and sense of wonderment...This book serves not only as a monument to this nearly forgotten town, but also as a historical record of life there."

From the blogosphere: Lance Strate's Blog Time Passing posts the article from The Chronicle of Higher Education. Luanne comments: "Mayer Kirshenblatt's work is brilliant! I gasped - for me, always a good sign. Blessings to his daughter for encouraging his work. Thank you for sharing."

A Look At A Lost World. "They Called Me Mayer July is a beautiful book, both in the written word and the art work...Artistically, the detail is stunning and a joy to behold. For those of us whose ancestors came from ..."

The lost world: 91-year-old painter recreates his Polish shtetl, by Joe Eskenazi, The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, Thursday August 30, 2007.

A Father Tells His Story," by Jean Tamarin, The Chronicle Review, Section B of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Friday August 17, 2007. Quoting from "The Daughter's Afterword": "What resulted is more picaresque than bildungsroman. They Called Me Mayer July is episodic: It is made up of spare anecdotes told in the 'realm of living speech,' digressions into the practical workings of the world. ... This is Walter Benjamin's art of the storyteller, 'the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.'" Check out hard copy of The Chronicle Review, pp. 14 and 15, for a beautiful two-page color spread featuring paintings and excerpts.

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"It is best through personal stories that we can grasp the world of our fathers which the Nazis had destroyed. Mayer Kirshenblatt has a unique gift for evocation of the past in his simple and beautiful paintings. Each one tells a story. Together they make up a world."--Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

"Mayer Kirshenblatt brings to life the small Polish town of Apt prior to 1934. We see before our eyes the world of Polish Jewry, from the well-dressed kleptomaniac who steals live fish to Kirshenblatt's mother in her kitchen. His paintings are simple, direct, often witty, and always moving. A book to buy, a book to share."--Sander L. Gilman, author of Multiculturalism and the Jews

"As if memory itself had come and lifted up his brush, Mayer Kirshenblatt evokes every aspect of his childhood in a tender, beautiful series of paintings. The accompanying narrative mirrors the qualities of his art: a remarkable spontaneity and transparency permits the precious illusion that Apt, Poland lives again in scenes of birth and death, recreations of kitchens and fire stations and farms, inhabited by a full and lively cast of butchers, milkmaids, prostitutes, musicians, all so lovingly and creatively brought to life. It is a magician's trick, a joyous and deeply satisfying immersion in the lost world of prewar Poland Jewry."--Ann Kirschner, author of Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story

Additional reviews may be found here.