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
Results 1-5 of 82
... ascended to the Land of Israel and came to see Sonya. Sonya put a heap of oranges before her. Said the priest's wife, Sonichka, you treat that expensive fruit the way we treat potatoes. Said Sonya, and where you are, you treat potatoes ...
... ascended to Jerusalem, he wound up back in the Orthodox and antiZionist religious world of the Old Yishuv. Inexplicably, he fell under its spell and eventually married Shifra, the daughter of an extreme Orthodox fanatic, who was ...
... ascended to the Land of Israel to build it from its destruction and to be rebuilt by it.” Etymologically, the word “homeland” (moledet) means “the land of your birth” and is used in Modern Hebrew literature as “fatherland” in the ...
... ascended to the Land of Israel to build it from its destruction and to be rebuilt by it. From the day our comrade Isaac knew his mind, not a day went by that he didn't think about it. A blessed dwelling place was his image of the whole ...
... ascend to see what was going on there in Palestine. In those days, the Zionists used to call the Land of Israel Palestine. And when they got to Palestine, they would come visit him and would have their picture taken with him as he ...