In a recent pro­file on Pub­lish­ers Week­ly, illus­tra­tor and author Uri Shule­vitz wry­ly com­ment­ed, ​“I think I have earned the right to call myself an old man.” The cel­e­brat­ed eighty-five-year-old artist’s illus­trat­ed mem­oir, Chance: Escape from the Holo­caust, is just out and already being received with great acclaim. Born in War­saw in 1935, Shule­vitz escaped Nazi-occu­pied Poland through the Sovi­et Union, even­tu­al­ly set­tling in Israel; he moved to the US in 1959, where his career as an author and illus­tra­tor flour­ished. His many hon­ors and awards include the Calde­cott, Syd­ney Tay­lor, and Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards. Like the medieval explor­er in his The Trav­els of Ben­jamin of Tudela, Shule­vitz has deliv­ered on his promise to bring Jew­ish life — in both its fan­tas­tic and most mun­dane events — to read­ers: ​“So I’ll tell you only about the most amaz­ing places I saw and the most fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries I heard.” His lat­est book, Chance, looks back at the past and illu­mi­nates the moti­va­tion behind many of his ear­li­er Jew­ish-themed works. Three sto­ries in par­tic­u­lar—How I Learned Geog­ra­phy, Ben­jamin of Tudela, and The Magi­cian—rich­ly illus­trate Jew­ish respons­es to the depri­va­tions and the joys of a pre­car­i­ous world.

How I Learned Geog­ra­phy (2008)presents an event in young Uri Shulevitz’s life which he lat­er revis­its in Chance. As in folk or fairy tales where a char­ac­ter — often a child — receives some­thing of lit­tle mate­r­i­al val­ue which lat­er turns out to be redemp­tive, Uri’s father brings home to his fam­i­ly a seem­ing­ly use­less map of the world. Chance traces the Shule­vitz family’s odyssey from War­saw to Belarus, Siberia, Kaza­khstan and Paris, as they strug­gle to stay alive while evad­ing Nazi ter­ror. What is it about this par­tic­u­lar episode that com­pelled the author to return to it in the con­text of a longer memoir?

In Geog­ra­phy, the voy­age is tele­scoped into one brief moment: ​“When war dev­as­tat­ed the land, build­ings crum­bled to dust. Every­thing we had was lost, and we fled emp­ty-hand­ed.” Uri’s father leaves to find food in the mar­ket, a crowd­ed bazaar of exot­i­cal­ly dressed peo­ple speak­ing unfa­mil­iar lan­guages. His quest for food is locat­ed with­in the Jew­ish expe­ri­ence of flight from per­se­cu­tion and refuge — in this case, the Cen­tral Asian steppe. He returns not with bread — which cost too much — but with a care­ful­ly rolled-up map. An over­sized suit hangs off his gaunt body while Uri and his moth­er hold out their hands like beg­gars. Uri’s par­ents each play a dis­tinct role in his life. Yet they also ful­fill one typ­i­cal image of a Jew­ish home, where a strong and prag­mat­ic woman’s quest to pro­tect her child is frus­trat­ed by a male dream­er. Angered at her husband’s inane log­ic that, since they were unable to afford food they might as well admire the map, she trans­lates his fail­ure into mock­ing words: “’No sup­per tonight, Moth­er said bit­ter­ly. ​‘We’ll have the map instead.’” Uri is angry, too.

In both books, the map becomes a mag­i­cal reminder that, even as his fam­i­ly is trapped by cir­cum­stances, the world out­side is lim­it­less. The pic­ture book’s two-page spread of father and son con­nect­ing word­less­ly with one anoth­er through the enor­mous map has a tone of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Inter­est­ing­ly, How I Learned Geog­ra­phy is ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of his father, the man who stands on a small stool in one cor­ner of the first pic­ture, patient­ly mount­ing the map on the wall. Uri, a small boy dressed in grownup male clothes, watch­es. In the next pic­ture, he is alone with the map, con­cen­trat­ing intent­ly as he draws pic­tures based on its con­tent ​“on any scrap of paper that chanced my way.” Chance has gov­erned his family’s escape, as well as his abil­i­ty to prac­tice his art. The fol­low­ing pages show Uri fly­ing through the air over the map, like Marc Chagall’s shtetl­Jews, tran­scend­ing his phys­i­cal world through imag­ined possibilities.

The Trav­els of Ben­jamin of Tudela fol­lows a jour­ney through actu­al time and space. Based on the jour­nal of a twelfth cen­tu­ry Span­ish Jew who explored the world more than a cen­tu­ry before Mar­co Polo, Shulevitz’s illus­trat­ed book for old­er read­ers places one wan­der­ing Jew at the cen­ter of world events — the peren­ni­al out­sider look­ing in. Each page fea­tures dra­mat­ic images from his­to­ry, some involv­ing Jews direct­ly, oth­ers only periph­er­al­ly. The col­or­ful map of Shulevitz’s child­hood is no longer an invi­ta­tion to dream, but a back­ground to a series of intense­ly real­ized moments. The city of Con­stan­tino­ple fea­tures a spec­ta­cle of wild ani­mals in the Hip­po­drome, while Ben­jamin com­ments that Jews are con­fined to an out­ly­ing area of the city. In Jerusalem, the Jew­ish trav­el­er mourns the fact that Chris­t­ian Cru­saders con­trol the city, and in Bagh­dad he con­ceals his iden­ti­ty by speak­ing Ara­bic and fol­low­ing Islam­ic customs.

The shape-shift­ing Ben­jamin observes from the side­lines, but also immers­es him­self in the Jew­ish past. Pic­tures change tones, from the dark brown of shift­ing sands in the Sahara, to the riotous blue of waves off the coast of Sici­ly. Among the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of Bagh­dad, he hears sto­ries of leg­endary Jew­ish war­riors in Ara­bia, ​“the only Jews who live in free­dom, in their own land, and have no for­eign ruler.” In Egypt, Ben­jamin claims to rec­og­nize the store­hous­es for grain that the bib­li­cal Joseph had built, prov­ing his irre­place­able val­ue to the rul­ing Pharaoh although he had arrived in the land as a slave. Every­where that Jews lived mar­gin­al­ized lives, they might also rise to posi­tions of influ­ence or pow­er — reliant on chance, of course. As in Shulevitz’s vul­ner­a­ble child­hood, they might survive.

The Magi­cian is a qui­eter and more poignant tale; Shule­vitz trans­lat­ed and adapt­ed it from a Yid­dish sto­ry by I.L. Peretz. In this book, the cen­tral char­ac­ters are a poor cou­ple root­ed in a small town. The magi­cian him­self, the prophet Eli­jah in dis­guise, is the trav­el­er, appear­ing sud­den­ly to resolve the ter­ri­ble pover­ty of a man and his wife who are too poor to make a Passover seder. The magician’s tricks are so elab­o­rate and his ragged appear­ance so con­tra­dic­to­ry that the cou­ple remains skep­ti­cal. They vis­it their rab­bi to ask if the mag­ic is good or evil. Shulevitz’s small and detailed black and white pic­tures are spaced out, leav­ing inch­es of white back­ground between the text at the bot­tom of the page and the image above. Fac­ing only a wood­en table and glow­ing can­dles, the magi­cian pulls food, wine, and pil­lows from the air, allow­ing them to float down­wards and assem­ble them­selves exact­ly as needed.

The couple’s patient humil­i­ty has been reward­ed, but the rabbi’s expla­na­tion also sup­ports Shulevitz’s own expe­ri­ences: ​“Evil mag­ic can­not cre­ate real things. It can only fool the eyes.” The enchant­ments of Uri’s paper map, the incred­i­ble visions of Ben­jamin of Tudela, and the magician’s per­fect cre­ation of a seder meal, all tes­ti­fy to imagination’s pow­er. None of these books’ pro­tag­o­nists can alter the con­di­tions of their chaot­ic and hos­tile world, but they con­struct a par­al­lel real­i­ty of Jew­ish exis­tence and joy. In intro­duc­ing his account, Ben­jamin asserts that he will try to nar­row its focus so as not to over­whelm the read­er: ​“So I’ll tell you only about the most amaz­ing places I saw and the most fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries I heard.” Uri Shule­vitz has ful­filled his character’s promise in a long and remark­able lit­er­ary life.