A poor couple have nothing with which to celebrate the holiday of Passover in this atmospheric picture-book adaptation of a story from the late 19th/early 20th-century Yiddish-language author, I.L. Peretz. Then a mysterious magician comes to their village, and after performing some extraordinary tricks in the public square, seeks them out, asking to be their guest. Confiding that they have nothing, the couple is assured that their guest has everything necessary to celebrate the holiday, and they watch as he conjures all of the comfort and food they could dream of. This however, leaves them with a dilemma: should they trust this stranger's magic...?

We owned a copy of The Magician when I was a child, and I used to pore over it, endlessly fascinated by its simply told but intensely engrossing tale of magic and miracles, and its finely detailed etching-style artwork. There was always something just a little bit creepy about the eponymous magician, even if he turned out to be the Prophet Elijah - a force of good, rather than evil. Passover begins tonight at sundown, so I picked up this book today for a reread - the first in years - and found it every bit as enchanting and spooky as I remember. Recommended to picture-book readers looking for magical Passover stories, or for tales set in the Eastern European Jewish shtetls of the past. ( )

A poor magician causes all the fixings of a seder to appear out of nowhere for a poor couple. Before they eat anything though, they check with their rabbi to make sure it is ok. He explains how they can tell if it is, but by the time they return, the magician, who, they now realize, is Elijah, has gone. So, if they had not doubted and checked with their local source of Jewish law, would they have broken bread (well, matzah) with Eliyahu HaNavi? Did they miss a chance to bring the Messiah? And why did they refuse to go to a neighbor's house and allow the neighbor the opportunity to perform the mitzvah of welcoming guests? ( )