Only Yesterday: A NovelPrinceton University Press, 2019 M02 26 - 696 pages When Israeli Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon published the novel Only Yesterday in 1945, it quickly became recognized as a major work of world literature, not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. The book tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya--the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence? |
From inside the book
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... Holy Land,” yet raised families and maintained a Jewish presence, mainly in Jerusalem and Safed. Many of them lived on the minimal “Distribution” (Haluka) given them by “Societies” (Kolel), according to their cities of origin, where the ...
... Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He with the Kedushah, We shall sanctify You, and others sanctify Him with We shall bless You, and they wrestle with each other and create a Quarrel. And another Quarrel, between Assimilationists and Zionists. The ...
... Holy-OneBlessed-Be-He to match his trust, while Simon his descendant placed his trust in trade, and trade sometimes brings honors to those who practice it and sometimes brings horrors on those who practice it. Now a new worry was added ...
... neither learning nor earning, but do have a Quarrel. Some sanctify the Name of the Holy-One-BlessedBe-He with the Kedushah, We shall sanctify You, and others sanctify Him with We shall bless You, and they wrestle with 8 Prologue.
... Holy City of Przemysl, and because Przemysl is a Citadel, a fortress for the whole state. Like everybody else in Galicia, Isaac thought that in the whole world there was no Citadel stronger than the one in Przemysl, and now that the ...