[1] Kalish was born in Wolozyn, Russian Empire (now Valozhyn, Belarus), to Yoel Kalashick (also spelt Kolasik or Kalatzik) and Anna Levinson.

[1] Kalish studied with Herman Matzen at the Cleveland School of Art; in New York City with Herbert Adams at the National Academy of Design, and in the studios of Alexander Stirling Calder and Isidore Konti; and in Paris with Paul Wayland Bartlett at the Académie Colorossi, and Jean Antoine Injalbert at the École des Beaux-Arts.

He was stationed at the medical hospital at Camp Cape May, New Jersey, where his artistic ability and knowledge of anatomy proved useful for the developing field of plastic surgery for wounded soldiers.

[7] Washington, D.C. publisher Willard M. Kiplinger commissioned Kalish to create fifty portrait statuettes of prominent figures in World War II era politics, arts and sciences.

Critic Emily Genauer wrote in 1938, "It is the workmen who dominate the American scene, and who have become as surely symbolic of their time as the pioneers in covered wagons, and the robber barons and the great merchant princes were in their respective eras."