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? |
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... feet aren't moving, for with so many things, his head is heavy and his feet are heavier than his head. Even more remarkable is his hymn to the greatness of the Austrian Empire: The train wound its way up, and wound its way down. High ...
... feet, and like those wheels, when they beat they travel on, so did Isaac's heart travel on. Yesterday he had worried lest there be some obstacle and he wouldn't go. And lo and behold, there was no obstacle and he is traveling. He had ...
... feet. The train rolled on between villages and hamlets, cities and towns. Some were known for their great rabbis and others were known for their famous cemeteries. Some earned a name with the produce of their fields and the fruit of ...
... feet are made of leather and not of straw. But the villagers themselves behave like villagers, they spit coarsely, and when they belch they don't cover their mouth, and their tongue is neither Polish nor Ukrainian, but a little like the ...
... feet aren't moving, for with so many things, his head is heavy and his feet are heavier than his head. So he waved his hand in resignation, and entertained the idea that a person who is going to the Land of Israel can forgo the whole ...