Ozersky is a critic and essayist. In this essay, Ozersky describes how, beneath the supernatural surface of this story, one can see Singer's deeply tragic view of human life.

Singer, considered one of the most important Yiddish writers of the twentieth century, presents contemporary readers with a confusing paradox in his stories, and "Henne Fire" is no exception. Singer writes of lost periods of time and distant, forgotten places, like the European shtetl (village) communities destroyed by the Nazis, and the postwar communities of expatriate Jews living in America amidst the specter of the holocaust. Yet Singer makes no attempt to explain Jewish culture or life to the reader. Furthermore, his straightforward tales of demons, imps, black magic, and evil spirits puzzle many readers. Does Singer really believe in such things? (He claimed to.) Or is this magic realism? Are his works ethnic literature, half fiction and...