7. Dan Laor, Ḥayyei ‘Agnon [A Life of Agnon] (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1998), p. 408.
8. The story began as a fragment, also called “Hasiman,” which appeared in Moznayim (Iyyar/Sivan [May] 1944), p. 104. The full story, with its forty-two sections, appeared in S. Y. Agnon, Ha’eish veha‘eitsim (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1962), pp. 283–312. Translated by Arthur Green in Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman (eds.), S. Y. Agnon: A Book That Was Lost: Thirty-Five Stories (New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2008), pp. 397–429.
9. I have argued this point in my Ḥurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996).
10. For an expansion of this theses, see chapter 2 (“Two Models in the Study of Holocaust Representation”) in my Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).
11. Abyss of Despair (Yeven metsulah), trans. Abraham J. Mesch (New York: Bloch, 1950).
12. The narrator as a chronicler allied with the communal register was already employed to great advantage in Hebrew literature by Micha Yosef Berdichevsky. See the story “Parah adumah” in Kitvei Mikhah Yosef Bin-Gurion (Berdichevsky) (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1975), pp. 181–184.
13. The story originally appeared in Haaretz on September 14, October 5, and December 5, 1958.
14. Literally in the Hebrew: the meat was still between his teeth and undigested. The reference is to Numbers 11:33, which describes the unrestrained cravings of the Israelites for meat. A more contemporary example would be Abraham Joshua Heschel’s celebration of East European Jewish piety in his The Earth Is the Lord’s (New York: H. Schuman, 1950).
15. The pedagogical passion for fashioning a mode of communication that is precisely fitted to his listeners is made the subject of an anecdote, a mashal of sorts, about a Jewish jeweler who is summoned to create gold earrings for the king’s daughter and takes special pains to adapt the ornament to the exact proportions of her ear (414).
16. Shulamit Almog argues that Rabbi Moshe does not make practical use of his eyewitness knowledge of Aaron’s death because he realizes that matters of Jewish law must be adjudicated according to evidence and procedures that are transparent and available to all. Despite the rabbi’s intense empathy for Zlateh, he knows that supernatural disclosures that he alone — together with the shamash — have been privy to cannot meet this standard of evidence. See Shulamit Almog, ‘Ir, mishpat, sipur [City, Law, Story] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 2002), pp. 78–82.
17. Joshua Shanes, “Buchach,” YIVO Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Buchach; Martin Rudner, “Buczacz Origins,” http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/Places/Buczacz/bucz-p1.htm.
18. Literally, the persecutions of 5408 and 5409.
19. Shanes, ibid.
20. This is a rich theme in Agnon’s corpus. At the conclusion of Oreaḥ natah lalun [A Guest for the Night] the keys to the study house of Buczacz, which has been decimated by World War One, are transferred to Eretz Yisrael. In the opening, foundational story of ‘Ir umelo’ah (“Buczacz,” pp.9–13), the founding of the city is framed as a way station on an ascent to Eretz Yisrael that became permanent.
21. For a responsible overview of these issues with representative texts, see Simcha Paull Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994), especially chapter 6, “Visionary Tours of the Afterlife in Medieval Midrash,” pp. 163–232.
22. Qetsat qasheh, “a little difficult,” is a phrase that has its origins in the Tosafists’ commentary on the Talmud; it is used when the Tosafists find glaring contradictions or problems in Rashi’s commentary. It is a classic instance of understatement. Within a religious tradition based on the presumed authority of earlier teachers, the phrase is a delicate means of noting a major issue. See “Hasiman” [The Sign], 714, for an interesting parallel.
23. The other outstanding example of the overall narrator handing over the narration to a narrator dramatized within the story is “Ha’ish levush habadim” [The Linen Man, 84–121].
24. David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).
25. This is wonderfully dramatized in the story “Genizah” by Devorah Baron, Parshiyot: sipurim mequbatsim [Collected Stories] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1951), pp. 236–245. Also note to pp.424–425, where the shamash digresses on the rabbi’s championing the mashal as a homiletic tool superior to the rhetoric of reproach (tokheḥah). It is worth noting that the narrator intervenes immediately after this remark to point out that midrash collections were scarce in the rabbi’s time, whereas today all recognize the worth of the mashal. In the story “Hamevakshim lahem rav” in ‘Ir umelo’ah, a letter of rabbinic appointment specifies the obligation to include aggadah and meshalim in public homilies in anticipation of an inclination of scholarly rabbis to speak only of matters of halakhah.
26. In the very first story in ‘Ir umelo’ah, “Buczacz,” the founding of the city is presented as resulting from an arrested pilgrimage to the Land of Israel.
GLOSSARY
Agunah Literally a “chained woman”; a woman who cannot remarry because her husband will not grant her a divorce, or because the fact of his death has not been conclusively established.
Alfasi Isaac Alfasi, eleventh-century talmudist active in Fez, Morocco.
Ashkenaz The Jewish communities along the Rhine Valley in the tenth to thirteenth centuries that were formidable centers of Talmud study.
Av Beit Din The head of a rabbinic court, usually the presiding rabbi of a community.
Avodah Worship.
Beit din Rabbinic court.
Beit midrash Study house.
Bimah A raised platform in the synagogue where the Torah is read.
Dayan Judge in a Jewish court.
Etrog A citrus fruit essential to the observance of the Sukkot festival; it is similar but not identical to a lemon.
Gabbai A volunteer official who oversees the finances of a synagogue and directs the allocation of honors.
Gan Eden Paradise (lit. the Garden of Eden).
Gehinnom The Netherworld, Hell.
Haftarah A portion from the Prophets read after the weekly reading from the Pentateuch on Sabbath mornings.
Halakhah Jewish law and jurisprudence.
Havdalah A ceremony, recited Saturday after sundown, using a candle, spices and wine, that separates the Sabbath from the weekdays.
Ḥidush An interpretation that presents a new insight on a classic text.
Hoshana Rabba The seventh day of the autumn festival of Sukkot.
Kaddish Prayer of praise in Aramaic; also recited by mourners.
Kohen (pl. kohanim) A descendant of the priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple.