52 pages • 1 hour read
Sacha LambWhen the Angels Left the Old Country
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “When the Angels Left the Old Country”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
In a small shtetl, an angel and a demon sit together in the back of a synagogue. The shtetl is simply known to locals as Shtetl and has no other name. The demon, Ashmedai, is named after his father, but he is more of a sprite and does not have the fully recognized demonic magic and wings. He is called Little Ash.
Unlike Little Ash, the angel does not identify with any gender but presents itself as a boy. Its name changes to match what it is doing or feeling at any given moment. The angel is guided by angelic senses and is only able to concentrate on whatever calls to it from the universe. The mystical identities of both angel and demon shield their more outlandish qualities from human perception; people cannot perceive Little Ash’s birdlike feet or the angel’s hooves. The two often argue, and they are now sparring over Little Ash’s suggestion that they follow the youth of Shtetl to America. Suddenly, Samuel the Baker arrives and states that he has not heard from his daughter, Essie, in quite some time. She left for America, but the last letter she sent was from Warsaw. Little Ash convinces the angel that they must go to Warsaw to find and help Essie, framing it as a mitzvah, or good deed, and effectively making this mission the angel’s only goal.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
After hitching rides and stealing tickets, Little Ash and the angel arrive in Warsaw. Little Ash gives the angel new clothes to blend in. On the platform at the train station, Little Ash attracts the attention of Yossel, a conman who thinks that he can cheat the two. While Yossel believes that he chooses to target the pair because of their obvious newness to the city, Little Ash has actually used his power of seeing sin to attract Yossel to him. Little Ash asks Yossel about Reb Fishl, the man who coordinated Essie’s journey. Yossel warns him that Reb Fishl is a con artist, but he does agree to bring the pair to him.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
To the southeast of Shtetl, in Belz, a young woman named Rose plans to travel to America with her best friend, Dinah. Rose wants to go to America to make enough money to move her entire family there; she worries that if she stays in Belz, her younger brother, Motl, may be conscripted into the army. After seeing an advertisement for trips to America, Rose takes over her family shop and hires Dinah to work with the customers and help Motl run deliveries. Dinah, the prettiest girl in the shtetl, brings in business, and both girls are finally making good money. However, Dinah is hesitant to go to America and does not want to abandon her younger brothers. She also develops a crush on a local boy and does not realize that Rose looks at her the same way he does.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
As Yossel leads Little Ash and the angel to Reb Fishl, Little Ash asks the conman many questions about America. The angel, who only knows Aramaic and some Yiddish, cannot understand them. Yossel tells them that they will find Reb Fishl at the synagogue and points them in the right direction; Yossel feels guilty about sending them to such a bad man. Once inside the synagogue, the angel immediately falls into prayer and does not notice that the synagogue is filled with people who are annoyed at God. During the service, Little Ash notices a man who has broken all 613 commandments; the demon can see these sins written all over him. The man is Reb Fishl.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Little Ash sees an opportunity to use Reb Fishl to achieve his goal of getting himself and the angel to America. The man has money and connections to coordinate a crossing, and Little Ash hopes to use Reb Fishl’s crimes against him to obtain these assets. He goes up to the women’s level of the synagogue to speak with the ghosts clinging to the ceiling. As a demon, he believes that ghosts are beneath him, but he hopes that they might agree to help him. He first asks if Essie is there and is relieved to hear no response. When he asks if any of them hold a grudge against Reb Fishl, they start yelling. The yelling startles the angel from its prayers. Noticing that Little Ash is missing, the angel suspects that the demon is to blame for the noise and goes searching for him.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
After a year and six months, Rose decides that they finally have enough money to leave for America. She tells her family, and they prepare a big feast to share with Dinah’s family in celebration. Rose feels nervous, wanting everything to be perfect for Dinah so that the announcement will be special. After helping her mother prepare the food, Rose changes into nice clothing and goes to Dinah’s house to tell her the news and invite her family over. Suddenly, Dinah comes flying into Rose’s arms and happily announces that Saul Lehman, the boy on whom she has a crush, has proposed to her. By working at Rose’s store, Dinah has been able to earn a dowry. When Rose realizes that Dinah will not be going to America with her, she is devastated.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
The angel finds Little Ash and scolds him for the noise. The angel cannot see ghosts, so Little Ash puts his tears in the angel’s eyes to make the ghosts visible. Little Ash also points Reb Fishl out to the angel. That night, they find Reb Fishl at the tenements he owns. Little Ash threatens him with the names of his many ghostly victims, who died in the city after Reb Fishl cheated them out of their money. Reb Fishl thinks that the angel and demon are just children, so he invites them inside, planning to kill them. Once inside, Little Ash asks about Essie, but Reb Fishl pulls out a gun. After some taunting from Little Ash, Reb Fishl shoots the angel, who simply wishes the bullet away. In the chaos, Little Ash pulls Reb Fishl’s soul out through his eyes and eats it. They then search his apartment for information about Essie. Little Ash finds a letter from her and learns that she is in debt to Reb Fishl and his friend, a shop boss who resides in America. Little Ash guilts the angel into accompanying him to America to save Essie.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary
In Reb Fishl’s apartment, Little Ash collects their new papers. He will be Asher Klein, a 16-year-old boy, and the angel will be Uriel Federman, also a boy. The angel expresses some misgivings about this plan; being very uncertain of its identity and gender, the angel does not want to become too attached to the name. They pass an uneasy night and leave in the morning. The angel finds a copy of the Talmud that belonged to one of Reb Fishl’s victims. Upon reading an attached letter indicating that the book was supposed to go to America with its owner, the angel promises to deliver the book to the man’s surviving family in America.
Part 1 Analysis
As Part 1 establishes the baseline of Little Ash and the angel’s existence in Shtetl, Lamb makes it a point to implicitly outline the rules by which the two beings must abide, as well as the social and political realities that beset the people around them. For example, although they are happy in Shtetl, Little Ash wishes to go to America to avoid the next antisemitic pogrom that Russia might soon initiate, and his desire mirrors that of the village’s young people, many of whom have already abandoned their shtetl to venture across the ocean and begin a new life in America. In many ways, this exodus highlights The Challenges of Migration and Adaptation, and Little Ash’s preoccupation with going to America reflects the common sentiment that “[t]here were no jobs for Jews in Poland […], but in America they had jobs. In America they had all kinds of wonderful things” (6). Many young people in Shtetl, like Essie, are leaving for the US because they cannot find work in the towns and surrounding areas. While this trend is partially due to economic stagnation, the antisemitism of their current surroundings also denies them access to local opportunities. For this reason, America represents a new opportunity to build a new life, giving people the ability to financially support those they leave behind in the titular “old country.” Thus, Little Ash’s dream reflects that of the humans who surround him.
Throughout the novel, the opposing natures of Little Ash the demon and his friend, the angel, create a unique dynamic in which they share a common goal but have different means of pursuing it and even different reasons for doing so. Thus, the two protagonists actively build Friendships That Bridge Differences. Because Little Ash understands that the angel operates differently, he invents persuasive tactics that are designed to appeal to the strongest portions of his friend’s nature. He knows that for the angel to become inspired to do something, it must frame the endeavor at hand as a quest to help someone. For example, Little Ash wants to leave Shtetl and see America for his own selfish reasons, but when he learns that Essie, a girl in their village, may need help, he presents the angel with the idea in such a way that the angel’s nature will compel it to agree. As the narrative states:
Little Ash had planted the idea of leaving their village in the head of the angel. When he explained to it what was happening, it took this idea and turned it around, so that it was no longer an idea to go see the world […], but the idea of doing a mitzvah (9).
Little Ash’s goal is to go to America to see the world, and he wants the angel to accompany him, but he understands that the angel will not follow unless it feels like it can complete a mitzvah, or good deed, in the process. Therefore, Little Ash cleverly frames the journey as a rescue mission to help Essie. Significantly, their different approaches to exploring America will eventually allow them to help Essie, with the angel providing the passion and reason for helping and Little Ash making the actual plans to do so.
Though they are mythical beings, both the angel and Little Ash bear the physical forms of adolescents, and just like human adolescents, they spend much of the novel exploring their identities. The angel in particular struggles with its identity in the world of humans, for it does not have a set gender and often changes its name to match whatever calls to it from the universe. In this way, the angel constantly navigates new aspects of The Shaping of Personal Identity, and it only chooses to present as a young boy in order to better pursue its true passion of studying holy books. However, its outward appearance does not match its inner feelings, and it is often called in different directions to look after different things and people. At the beginning of the novel, for example, the angel’s name is “Argument” because it argues with Little Ash. However, it later identifies more strongly with the goal of rescuing Essie, so it changes its inner self once again. As it journeys with Little Ash across the ocean to America, it will further change itself when it takes on the name of Uriel, exploring new and more deeply nuanced ways of developing a personal identity.
