The Parable and Its Lesson: A Novella (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and C)

by S. Agnon

  36 to get the atonement chickens The reference is to the kaparot (lit. expiations) ceremony performed by observant Jews on the morning of the day before Yom Kippur, in which the sins of an individual are symbolically transferred to a live fowl. The fowl—a rooster for a man, a hen for a woman—is swung around the head three times as biblical verses and a formula of vicarious atonement is recited. Money in the amount of the fowl’s value is often substituted for the fowl.

  36 Book of the Angel Razi’el Sefer Razi’el hamalakh, an early medieval book of instruction in magical lore and practices written in Hebrew and derived from the Jewish mystical tradition (Kabbalah). Its precise date and authorship are uncertain.

  36 never asked anyone to get his staff for him Babylonian Talmud tractate Sotah 10a. The implication is that Samson not only did not take bribes which blind the eyes of the wise (Deuteronomy 16:19) but sought no favors of any kind from anyone.

  36 recited the Torah blessings In the morning regimen, after the hands are washed and before the service proper, three short blessings concerning the giving and the study of Torah are recited, followed by readings from the Written Law (the Priestly blessing, Numbers 6:24–26) and the Oral Law (Mishnah Pe’ah 1:1) and the preliminary morning blessings.

  37 who crowns Israel in glory One of the blessings preliminary to the morning service. The letters on the parchments inside the tefillin are, like those on the Torah scroll, typically embellished by the scribe with tiny filigreed crowns over them.

  37 talmudic tractate Yevamot A key source for many of the laws pertaining to an agunah.

  37 lasts for twelve months As stated by Rabbi Akiva in Mishnah ‘Eduyot 2:10.

  37 worse than the heat of the sun These details of Gehinnom are drawn from various midrashic sources.

  39 young men and women Psalm 148:12.

  40 area forbidden to kohanim A kohen is required by Jewish law to remain in a state of ritual purity. Physical presence near a corpse or in a cemetery defiles him.

  40 implored the Lord Exodus 32:11. On public fast days at the afternoon service, the prescribed reading from the Torah is Exodus 32:11–14 and 34:1–10. The haftarah (reading from the prophetic books of the Bible) is Isaiah 55:6–56:8.

  40 to those already gathered Isaiah 56:8.

  41 resembled a silver goblet Agnon is drawing here on the kabbalistic notion that the whiteness or the darkness of one’s hair reflects the nature and quality of the inner self. See Elhanan Shilo, Hakabbalah biyetsirat Shai ‘Agnon [The Kabbalah in the Works of S. Y. Agnon] Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011, Hebrew), p. 223ff.

  42 there had been much persecution See above, note to page 16. Popular legend has it that Meir ben Isaac miraculously saved the Jewish community of Worms, and the Akdamut piyyut commemorates the event.

  43 Tosafot note in tractate Gittin The talmudic tractate Gittin treats of the laws of divorce. Zevaḥim treats of the animal sacrifices offered in the Temple. The Rashi comment is found at Zevaḥim 45b. The Tosafot note is at Gittin 54b.

  44 of My servant Moses Malachi 3:22.

  44 in the Book of the Angel Razi’el Sefer Razi’el hamalakh (Warsaw, n.d.), p. 22. Cited in Shilo, Hakabbalah biyetsirat Shai ‘Agnon, p. 321 note 107.

  44 sacrifical offering in the Temple The Tamid offering, described in Numbers 28:1–8.

  45 pray the whole day long Babylonian Talmud tractate Berakhot 21a.

  46 standing here with me Deuteronomy 5:28.

  46 shall a case be established Deuteronomy 19:15.

  46 punishment for our transgressions The reference is to Isaiah 40:2.

  48 midrash on Songs of Songs Midrash Rabbah on Song of Songs 1:8. Some versions have a different numbering.

  48 Midrash Tanhuma A collection of rabbinic midrash in several versions, dating uncertain.

  49 It is prayer Babylonian Talmud tractate Ta’anit 2a. The biblical verses respectively are from Exodus 23:25 and Deuteronomy 11:13. The reference to Maimonides is a verbatim citation from his Mishneh Torah, the Laws of Prayer, 1.1.

  49 mandated by the Torah itself Naḥmanides (R. Moses ben Naḥman, Ramban, 1194–1270) was a major Bible commentator and halakhist. Maimonides’ Book of the Commandments (Sefer hamizvot) is a detailed catalogue of the 248 positive and 365 negative commandments on which Naḥmanides wrote critical glosses, this being among the most famous.

  49 from the right earlock of the great teacher In Lurianic Kabbalah, the earlocks are metaphysical signifiers, the right one associated with the holy and the mystical, the left one with the mundane and the philosophical. Thus is Naḥmanides, a kabbalist, privileged over Maimonides. See Shiloh, Hakabbalah biyetsirat Shai ‘Agnon, pp. 226–228.

  50 Gates of Light Sha‘arei ’orah, a kabbalistic treatise by Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla (1248–ca. 1305), Fifth Gate, Sixth Sphere.

  50 Midrash ha-ne‘elam The Esoteric Midrash—a kabbalistic text inserted into the main text of the Zohar.

  50 Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer A late rabbinic midrash on Genesis, Exodus, and other parts of the Bible. It is ascribed to R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (late first, early second century) but is dated to the seventh or eighth century. The reference here is to the explication of Genesis 32:27ff. in chapter 37.

  50 his fragrance rubbed off on my hand Talmudic tractate Zevaḥim 96b. The folk saying conveys the idea that one acquires luster through association with an eminent person.

  51 knows its own bitterness Proverbs 14:10.

  51 the reward of humility is grace An adaptation of Proverbs 22:4.

  51 to the children of Israel Leviticus 23:44.

  52 and your father’s house Psalm 45:11.

  52 never laid eyes on Despite the centrality of Torah study, full sets of the Babylonian Talmud were not then necessarily widely available because of the cost. It is, therefore, not unimaginable for someone not to have seen ‘Eruvin, which is not among the more commonly learned talmudic tractates. The tractate deals with the laws of ‘eruv, the halakhic extension of private property into the public domain so as to permit one to carry objects within it on the Sabbath, which would otherwise be forbidden.

  52 could view the minor tractates Tractates of rabbinic teachings on subjects not treated in the Mishnah. They are usually included at the back of some volumes in printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud.

  52 weekly Torah portion was Yitro Exodus 18–20. The Decalogue is at 20:1–14.

  52 the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy Deuteronomy 5:6–18, the second iteration of the Decalogue in the Pentateuch.

  53 with their children forever Deuteronomy 5:26.

  54 how feeble our strength Jeremiah 51:30.

  54 study its ways and learn Proverbs 30:25 and 6:6.

  54 who dwell in your House Psalm 84:2–5.

  54 will die with my nest Job 29:18.

  54 all the days of my life Psalm 23:6.

  54 would only cite Rabbi Ibn Ezra Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164), Spanish grammarian and Bible commentator.

  54 the Radak Rabbi David Kimḥi (1160–1235), Provençal grammarian and Bible commentator.

  55 who have been banished Psalm 113:3 and 2 Samuel 14:14.

  55 passing shadow Psalm 144:4.

  56 and trample My courts Isaiah 1:12.

  56 who call upon him in truth Psalm 145:18.

  57 blame will not be lacking An adaptation of Proverbs 10:19 Where there is much talk, there is no lack of transgression.

  57 afflicted, downtrodden, and hurting Talmudic tractate Yevamot 47a.

  57 will put an end to words Job 18:1.

  57 full-day fast of silence The practice of a “fast of speech,” Ta’anit dibbur, arose only in early modern times as a penance and as a means to achieve greater spiritual elevation. It is not ordained biblically or rabbinically. The time for which it was undertaken varied, and during it the practitioner either kept silent or spoke only about Torah matters.

  58 between His shoulders Deuteronomy 33:12.

  58 Benjamin is a ravenous wolf Genesis 49:27.

>   58–59 sit alone and keep silent Lamentations 3:28.

  60 to make up the loss Moses Isserles (Rama), citing ’Or Zaru‘a in Shulḥan Arukh, ’Or hahayyim 135:2.

  60 moment of truth After 2 Chronicles 32:1.

  60 charges with folly Job 4:18.

  61 utters in Perek Shira Perek Shira (Passages of Praise) is a poemlike collection of biblical and talmudic verses of praise to God placed in the figurative mouths of the heavenly bodies; the elements of the natural world; the various members of the vegetable, animal, bird, and insect kingdoms; and, as indicated here, Gehinnom. The text appears in authoritative editions of the prayerbook but is not part of the liturgy. Author and date are unknown, but the work may go back to talmudic times.

  61 from one end of the world to the other Otzar hamidrashim, Gan ‘Eden/Gehinnom no. 32.

  61 rest on that day Otzar hamidrashim, ‘Aseret hadibrot no. 10.

  61 judged for twelve months Mishnah ‘Eduyot 2.10.

  61 does not descend again Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat 153a.

  61 fiery glow of Gehinnom Talmudic tractate Ḥagigah 27a.

  62 ascribe truth to Jacob Micah 7:20.

  63 from the commandment to study Torah Agnon cites this teaching in his Sefer sippur vesofer (p. 105, 108 in new ed.), citing Nathan ben Isaac Jacob Bonn’s Shikḥehat leket (Amsterdam, 1700), who attributes it to the Sodei razaya of Eliezer of Worms (ca. 1176–1238, author of the Rokeah).

  64 blessings on behalf of each individual At the conclusion of each section of the Torah reading (aliyah), the gabbai recites a blessing on behalf of the person called to the Torah for that section, as well as for his wife, family, and any other individuals he chooses to name. The blessing includes the sum of money the person stipulates to the gabbai as his pledge to the synagogue for the honor of having been called to the Torah reading.

  65 gematria calculation Gematria involves adding up the numerical value of each letter of the Hebrew alphabet (alef = 1, bet = 2, etc.). Eighteen is the numerical value of the two letters in the word ḥai, the Hebrew word for life; twenty-six is the numerical value of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.

  65 beats her laundry to get the water out The term is probably related to pralnia, the Polish word for laundry.

  65 as I have told elsewhere See ‘Ir umelo’ah, pp. 1ff. and 15.

  65 Rabbi Meshullam ben Kalonymus Rabbi Gershom (ca. 960–1028) and Rabbi Shimon (ca. 925–1010) were important rabbinical authorities in Mainz, a major Jewish community in the medieval Rhineland (Ashkenaz). Rabbi Meshullam ben Kalonymus (Italy, mid-tenth century) was a Talmudist and liturgical poet who corresponded with Gershom and Shimon on halakhic and scientific matters.

  66 our God stands firm forever Isaiah 40:8.

  66 gives tongue to knowledge Proverbs 16:21.

  66 to the local maskilim The maskilim (lit. enlightened ones, sing. maskil) referred to here are the literati in the Jewish community of that time who had some notion of secular ideas and books beyond classical Jewish sources. They antedate and anticipate their namesakes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who formally espoused the values of the Enlightenment (Haskalah in Hebrew). See above, note to page 8 (Aron began . . .).

  66 and knowing Me Jeremiah 9:23.

  66 who seeks after God Psalms 14:2 and 53:3.

  68 my Rock and my Redeemer Psalm 19:15.

  ESSAY ON THE PARABLE AND ITS LESSON

  [HAMASHAL VEHANIMSHAL]

  ALAN MINTZ

  THE WORK OF MEMORY

  Within the panoply of modern Jewish writing, Shmuel Yosef Agnon remains today an exceptional presence. At the center of the grand narrative of Jewish literature in our age is the movement outward from the world of the fathers. Whether the goal is full participation in American culture or the building of a new Jewish society in Palestine, the movement outward presupposes a break with the metaphysics of traditional Jewish belief and practice. That break can be figured as a clear-eyed ideological rejection or as a vertiginous loss of moorings, or as a sloughing off of a used-up identity. Whatever the case, the claims of Jewish law and the textual and theological world on which it is founded are stilled and suspended. The possibility of return continues to exist, and from time to time there appears a Rosenzweig who, out of the depths of acculturation, discovers the mystique of a Judaism he never knew. In relation to all these varied trajectories, Agnon’s exceptionality becomes clearer. Born into the world of tradition, Agnon found a way to participate in high European modernism without abandoning the rich textual world of Jewish faith. He even used this traditional world as a vehicle for realizing the ends of modernism at the same time as he used modernism as an instrument for illuminating fissures within the classical edifice of Judaism. Agnon thus performed the paradox of being a “revolutionary traditionalist,” in the formulation of Gershon Shaked.1 Comprehending this singular accomplishment has become one of the great challenges of modern Jewish literary studies.

  During the last fifteen years of his life (he died in 1970), Agnon became increasingly preoccupied with writing an epic cycle of stories about Buczacz, the town in Galicia in which he was raised and that he left at the age of nineteen to settle in Palestine. The stories were gathered and edited by his daughter Emunah Yaron, according to her father’s guidelines, in 1973 in a volume called ‘Ir umelo’ah, A City in Its Fullness.2 It is from this story cycle that The Parable and Its Lesson is drawn. The stories of ‘Ir umelo’ah give strong evidence for the existence of a late style in Agnon. I am using late style (spätstil) in the sense in which Theodor Adorno used the term to describe the late sonatas of Beethoven as works that constitute a “moment when the artist who is fully in command of his medium nevertheless abandons communication with the established social order of which he is part and achieves a contradictory, alienated relationship with it.”3 Edward Said adopts Adorno’s notion and uses it less as a precise term than as an evocative concept for illuminating the regressive freedom from constraints that writers and composers might allow themselves in the last stages of their careers. In a similarly evocative and nontechnical sense, the idea of late style helps us attend to the departures enacted in Agnon’s cycle of Buczacz stories. In Agnon’s case, the late breakthrough manifests itself as an act of renunciation. One of Agnon’s greatest achievements in the major phase of his career was an ironic self-dramatizing mode of narration that Arnold Band called the “dramatized ego.”4 The narrator of these important stories—as well as of the novel Oreaḥ natah lalun [A Guest for the Night]—is a figure very much like Agnon himself: a grandiose but weak-willed middle-aged writer with worldly interests as well as a loyalty to religious observance and Jewish learning, a kind of Jewish version of the homme moyen sensuel. Agnon used this persona to great advantage; but when it came to chronicling the long history of Buczacz he needed a narrative stance that, at least on the face of things, was objective, reliable and impersonal. And so he undertook the construction of the narrator of ‘Ir umelo’ah, who is a fascinating and formidable and new figure, but one whose creation meant putting away and giving up the authorial strategies relied on for so long.

  Now, one might have expected a thunderous reception for a major book published three years after the death of a major author, especially if the author was the only Hebrew writer to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, as Agnon was in 1966, together with Nelly Sachs. Yet the response in Israel’s vibrant literary community was decidedly scant and muted; the book was hardly noticed, and those who wrote about it tended to be older critics who were already possessed of a long-term devotion to Agnon’s work. There are several factors that might account for this surprising failure to connect to an audience. To begin with, the stories in ‘Ir umelo’ah, all of which have to do with the lives of Galician Jews in the pre-modern period, describe a world that must have seemed remote, antiquated and irrelevant in the decades of intense state building after the War of Independence. Within the Zionist consensus about the untenable nature of Jewish life in exile, ther
e had always been room for literary depictions that exposed the inner moral taint and political vulnerability of diaspora life. Even though the Buczacz stories convey no small measure of those failings, they nevertheless present a picture of a vital semi-autonomous and centuries-old religious communal culture; and this image could not have comported well with the attitudes and judgments of David Ben-Gurion’s statism and the society it shaped. During these years Ben-Gurion was busy building a state, while Agnon was building a city.

  A second factor was the implied judgment that within Agnon’s overall artistic career ‘Ir umelo’ah represented a regression. Agnon had acceded to the status of a great European modernist with the publication of the parabolic stories of Sefer hama’ayinasim [Book of Deeds] and Temol shilshom [Only Yesterday, 1945], a novel of the Second Aliyah with its brilliantly surreal passages written in the voice of a supposedly mad dog named Balak. For readers who esteemed Agnon for these achievements, the Buczacz stories seemed a throwback to a more naïve and less accomplished artist who had become sentimental in old age and renounced the ironic lens through which his best work was filtered. The decline and decimation of Buczacz had already been critically analyzed in the great pre-war novel Oreaḥ natah lalun [A Guest for the Night, 1939], and now, after the Holocaust completed the work of destruction, it was felt that Agnon was producing something very different: a yizker bukh, a memorial volume suffused with nostalgia and mourning for a lost world. Finally, the unique qualities of ‘Ir umelo’ah were obscured within the plethora of titles published within the years following the author’s death.5 This posthumous Agnon corpus, whose volumes in their original editions are distinguished by their black dust jackets and white bindings, amounts to fourteen titles, some of which appeared in close succession. Among the lot are thematic anthologies of classical sources, collections of correspondence and gatherings of public statements and occasional speeches, as well as fiction.6 The most sensational of these publications was the appearance in 1971 of the novel Shira, a tale of marital infidelity set among German émigré scholars in Jerusalem of the 1930s. Chapters of the novel published in 1948 had whetted the appetite of an eager readership, but out of a scruple of discretion, Agnon had made provision for the appearance of the whole novel only after his death, and the estimation of the stir it would cause was not off the mark.7 When ‘Ir umelo’ah appeared two years later, fragmentary epic of a vanished world that it is, there was little critical oxygen remaining.