This review appeared in the Fall issue of Jewish Action Magazine
The Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, authored works of modern Hebrew literature that are steeped in the language of the Torah and hundreds of years of Eastern European Jewish history and tradition. His stories, set in his Galician hometown of Buczacz, transport the reader into the vibrant world of Polish Jewry before World War II. There are probably few readers outside of the Orthodox Jewish community who have the cultural literacy necessary to recognize many of the Jewish allusions in Agnon’s stories. Yet Agnon’s works have not made the deep inroads into the Orthodox world that one might imagine they would.
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Dear Sarah,
Great review! You note that in âThe Signâ Agnon deal with Shavuot. I gave a Derasha citing another one of his stories dealing with Shavuot, in a more positive vein: https://rayanotyaakov.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/shavuot-5775-smells-and-flowers-ii.pdf
Best wishes,
Yaakov Bieler
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Thank you for sharing this fascinating article! I loved the engagement with Agnon and I loved the footnote of your granddaughter’s drawing as well 😉
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