Agnon shmuel yosef biography of michael
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Agnon, Shemuʾel Yosef
AGNON, SHEMUʾEL YOSEF (1888–1970), was a Hebrew prose writer and, along with the German Jewish poet Nelly Sachs, the 1966 Nobel laureate for literature. Born Shemuʾel Yosef Czaczkes in the town of Buczacz in the eastern European region of Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Agnon was raised in a traditionally observant Jewish family with an openness to participating in contemporary Western culture. Under the influence of Zionism, he immigrated to Palestine in 1908. There he lived primarily in Jaffa, which at the time was the center of secular-oriented Zionist culture. He also lived for several months in Jerusalem, a stronghold of non- and anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewry. During this period he changed his original family name, Czaczkes, to Agnon, adapted from the title of the first story he published in Palestine, "ʿAgunot." (ʿAgunot is a Jewish legal term for women unable to remarry because their husbands are missing or refuse to grant them a proper divorce, a circumstance Agnon used metaphorically to refer to psychological and spiritual alienation.)
Apparently motivated by the desire to expand his cultural horizons, Agnon left Palestine for Germany in 1912. As the product of traditional eastern Eur
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And The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight
Not so many years ago, there lived in the town of Buczacz (may His city be rebuilt, amen) a fine and upright Jew by the name of Menashe Chaim Ha’Cohen, a native of the holy community of Jazlowiec. While he would not have been counted among the world’s rich and mighty nor have found his place among the nation’s nobles, still the income he earned from his grocery store was ample rather than meager. He lived with his wife Kreindel Cherne, with whom God had graced him in his youth, and together with his wife he ate bread to the full and pursued righteousness and mercy all his days. He truly embodied the maxim of the Sages of blessed memory, “Who is he that does righteousness at all times? He who supports his wife and children.” At least in part, for the man was childless. And because they had no children, she, his helpmeet, put all her efforts into running the business. She presided over everything that had to do with the store, as was customary among the scattered communities of Israel in those days.
Ordinarily, such a man could have expected to dwell with his wife in peace and tranquility, to spend his days comfortably enjoying the good of the land, and when his appointed time should come, after a hundred and twenty year