[9] Dan Miron, “German Jews in Agnon’s Work,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23 (1978): 265–80.
[10] 10. Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem, pp. 92–93.
[11]Shai Agnon — Sh. Z. Schocken: Hilufe Igarot 1916–1959, Emuna Yaron, ed. (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House Ltd., 1991).
[12]Sippure Habesht, Emuna and Hayyim Yaron, eds. (Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing House Ltd., 1987).
[13]The Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah, Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, eds., trans. by William G. Braude (New York: Schocken Books, 1992).
[14] As cited in David Canaani, Shai Agnon be’al-peh (Israeclass="underline" Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1971).
The Signature Story
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Our anthology opens with “Agunot,” Agnon’s first publication in the Land of Israel and the story whose title he adapted to form his own name. “Agunot” marks the artistic birth of the writer and shapes his unique relationship to the traditional Jewish world. The title “Agunot,” derived from agunah, the legal term for a woman whose status in the community is indeterminate, highlights themes of disconnection and lack of wholeness. These themes enter indirectly into the story’s account of souls who are set adrift and unable to find their anchors. The narrative is prefaced by an exquisite passage that draws on the imagery of the Song of Songs to depict the close relationship of God to Israel. We might almost think we were reading a classical midrash — a rabbinical expansion on the biblical text. Indeed the story opens with the traditional phrase “It is said,” an expression used by the rabbis to introduce a quotation from Scripture. But rather than a biblical citation, “Agunot” crafts its own combination of images drawn from rabbinic commentary and mystical writings. This opening paragraph engages in an intricate piece of interpretive play, what we might call, following the critic Gershon Shaked, a pseudomidrash.
Endowing the relationship of God to Israel with a sense of radiant wholeness, the opening passage traces for the reader the tender desire with which God weaves a prayer shawl for Israel. The image of the prayer shawl portrays the interwoven relationship between God and Israel as an intimacy that is disrupted by the introduction of a “flaw” in the weave, a defect that appears to be the product of human error or frailty. This notion of the prayer shawl as a fabric woven out of many strands is a suggestive one: it can be taken further to suggest an emblematic image of Agnon’s writing as a weaving out of many sources.
The Signature Story
The image of the flawed prayer shawl and the loss of wholeness in the relationship of God to Israel provide a backdrop against which the kinds of loss that the story depicts can be measured. Thus we find in “Agunot” lovers who are mismatched or who undergo separation. We see the imbalance and disconnection that are the result of the excessive attachment of an artist to the holy ark he crafts, a woman’s jealousy of the artist’s commitment, and several pairs of mismatched lovers.
Desire figures prominently as a driving force in “Agunot,” but the aims and objects of desire are quite varied. They include certainly the desire of one person for another, but the story also demonstrates the rivalrous desires for glory in Torah learning felt by Jews in the Diaspora and those in the Land of Israel, as well as the desire of the artist to complete the perfect work. Nowhere do these desires find fulfillment. And so desire itself becomes a subject of the writing in this delicately wrought tale of attraction, investment, and frustration. Agnon returned to “Agunot” over the years, revising it in 1921 and again in 1931, each time rendering it a more concise and highly crafted text. The story that we have before us, rewritten twice over, weaves elements of hasidic storytelling and European romanticism into a narrative mode that is uniquely Agnon’s.
Agunot
1
It is said: A thread of grace is spun and drawn out of the deeds of Israel, and the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, in His glory, sits and weaves — strand on strand — a tallit all grace and all mercy, for the Congregation of Israel to deck herself in. Radiant in the light of her beauty she glows, even in these, the lands of her exile, as she did in her youth in her Father’s house, in the Temple of her Sovereign and the city of sovereignty, Jerusalem. And when He, of ineffable Name, sees her, that she has been neither sullied nor stained even here, in the realm of her oppressors, He — as it were — leans toward her and says, “Behold thou art fair, my beloved, behold thou art fair.” And this is the secret of the power and the glory and the exaltation and the tenderness in love which fills the heart of every man in Israel. But there are times — alas! — when some hindrance creeps up and snaps a thread in the loom. Then the tallit is damaged: evil spirits hover about it, enter into it, and tear it to shreds. At once a sense of shame assails all Israel, and they know they are naked. Their days of rest are wrested from them, their feasts are fasts, their lot is dust instead of luster. At that hour the Congregation of Israel stays abroad in her anguish, crying, “Strike me, wound me, take away my veils from me!” Her beloved has slipped away, and she, seeking him, cries, “If ye find my beloved, what shall ye tell him? That I am afflicted with love.” And this affliction of love leads to darkest melancholy, which persists — Mercy shield us! — until, from the heavens above, He breathes down upon us strength of spirit, to repent and to muster deeds that are pride to their doers and again draw forth that thread of grace and love before the Lord.
And this is the theme of the tale recounted here, a great tale and terrible, from the Holy Land, of one renowned for his riches — Sire Ahiezer by name — who set his heart on going up from the Diaspora to the holy city Jerusalem — may she be rebuilt and established — to work great wonders of restoration in the midst of her ruins, and in this way to restore at least a corner of the anteroom which will be transformed into our mansion of glory on the day when the Holy One, blessed be He, restores His presence to Zion — may it be soon, in our day!
And credit him kindly, Lord — credit him well for his wishes, and for his ministrations to his brethren, sons of his people, who dwell before Thee in the Land of the Living, and this though he ultimately failed.
Sire Ahiezer fathered no sons, but he praised the Ineffable sevenfold daily for the daughter who fell to his lot. He cherished her like the apple of his eye, and set maidservants and tirewomen to wait on her, that her very least wish might be honored. And, surely, she was worthy of all this respect, for she was the pattern of virtue, and all the graces were joined together in her person: princely the radiance of her countenance; like the matriarchs’ her straitness of virtue; her voice pleasing as the harp of David; and all her ways modest and gentle. But all this pride was inward, and dwelt apart, in the innermost chambers, so that only the intimates of her father’s house might behold her, at twilight, when, at times, she went down to walk in the garden, among the spice trees and the roses, where the doves fluttered about her in the twilight, murmuring their fondness in her ears and shielding her with their wings, like the golden cherubs on the ark of the sanctuary.
And when her season came, the season of love, her father sent couriers to all the dispersions of Israel, to spy out a youth that would be her match, such a paragon, a cluster of virtue, as had no peer in all the world. Here it was that the evil one intervened, and not in vain were the words bruited about, by the men of Jerusalem, to the effect that Sire Ahiezer had slighted all the seminaries and academies, all the seats of learning in the Land of Israel when he sent to find a match for his daughter among the sons of the exile abroad. But who might admonish so mighty a man — who might tender him counsel? They all began eagerly to await the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, would provide for this cloistered grace, glorious child, vaunted daughter of Jerusalem.