Although it is difficult to put words to each of the emotions that our students went through during the summer semester, the following brief excerpt may convey something of the emotion they felt for a moment in a house that today is recognized as a world heritage site:
“As a result of the historical catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was expelled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of exile. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem. In a dream, in a vision of the night, I saw myself standing together with my brother-Levites in the Holy Temple, singing with them the songs of David, King of Israel, melodies such as no ear has heard since the day our city was destroyed and its people went to exile”.
On a small hill, surrounded by cypress trees, sits the house of Shmuel Yosef Agnon –built by him and his wife in 1931– in what was not yet part of Jerusalem. In front of the gate of the house, almost 100 years ago, a sign requested that drivers proceed slowly, and quietly, so that Agnon would not lose his concentration as he worked. Last summer semester, together with Dr. Dafna Hornike, teacher of the Modern Hebrew Literature course “An Educational Approach from an Israeli Perspective”, our students had the opportunity to hear those words, in that place, and to connect with the unique legacy of one of Israel's greatest writers.
Born in Buczacz, today in western Ukraine, Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes is the only Israeli to date to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, a prize he received in 1966. Officially, his date of birth in the Hebrew calendar was 18th Av, 5648 (July 26, 1888), but he always said that his birthday was Tish’a B'Av, the day that commemorates the destruction of the Temple and the beginning of the exile of the Jewish people. That exile was eloquently described in his work, eventually earning him international acclaim. In 1908, Agnon emigrated to then-Ottoman Palestine, settling first in Jaffa and then Neve Tzedek, a suburb of Tel Aviv, to write. It was when he published his first story "Agunot" ("chained women", who cannot remarry because their husbands disappeared and their fate is uncertain) under the pseudonym "S. Y. Agnon”, which would become his official name. The short story was well received and helped establish his status as a young writer among the Hebrew literary community at the time. In 1912, he published his first book, The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight.
A historical question
Agnon's house is today a museum that honors his life and work. The second-floor study contains his enormous library of biblical, rabbinical, and modern literature. There, surrounded by 8,000 books and personal writings, next to the pedestal where – standing upright, as always - he wrote his best known and most beloved works, including A Simple Story, An Overnight Guest, Only Yesterday, and Shira. In this special atmosphere, the group of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking students reflected on the question of whether it is possible to study Israeli literature without actually being in Israel.
"Visiting the house served to connect the heart with the mind," says Marisa Bergman, who is currently finishing her Master's degree. “Having read Agnon’s stories and having been there, sitting next to the trees that he describes in his story, allowed me to understand the importance of uniting Israeli literature with the land of Israel. One can imagine it from the Diaspora, but having the experience of seeing it from the physical space that appears in the texts is wonderful. What was previously just a text ends up being three-dimensional in the experience of going through the spaces,” added Marisa, an educator, lecturer and licensed psychologist at the University of Buenos Aires. “Inside the house I saw things that helped me put the stories in their context and that is the best way to learn,” said Jana Galek Lew, a student in our Master's program who is a resident of the ORT-Olami school in Mexico City. She also related the impact of the visit to her training in International Relations and her current job: “Understanding what is happening in a country in social, macroeconomic and cultural terms helps to understand people's decisions at that time. As a teacher, this helps me a lot to be able to explain to the students what is special about a text or help them determine the origin of certain words in Hebrew,” she explained.
According to Gershom Scholem, the first professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Agnon’s works are considered archetypes of modern Hebrew literature due to the circumstances of the language in time and space that touched him. “A new life was springing up in the old Land of Israel and Hebrew literature was to serve as the connecting link between this new society and the disintegrating communities of the Diaspora” says Scholem. In this context, “Agnon stands at a crossroads in the development of modern Hebrew. (...) As an artist, Agnon is unequaled, a classical master; but, because of the circumstances of his time and his position, he is also the last of his line.”
We at Melton Center encourage our students to participate in unusual and exciting experiences like this one, so that they can experience our national history and learn through its characters and stories, such as those written in a house on a hill. These stories enrich and shape us as educators and thus form part of our legacy to the next generations.
References:
https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/literature-and-poetry/authors/shmuel-...
https://www.commentary.org/articles/gershom-scholem/reflections-on-s-y-a...
http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/en/datelist/Pages/Agnon.aspx
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3mHjSpe6a4P12dc6e4oIg3?si=aUdj970mQ_mC_...