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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... turned out to be the beginning of the first Jewish city Tel Aviv; the first Hebrew high school, Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv, and the Bezalel School of Art and Design in Jerusalem were the pride of the New Yishuv. During World War I ...
... turned into a branch of Zionism. Anyone who didn't know what to do with himself went there. There were those who came to talk and those who came to listen, and those who just came and stood leaning on their walking stick and chomping on ...
... and you would not reach the Land of Israel. But blessed be all the passengers, all were proper Jews and none of them turned him in or denounced him. And even though all of them love the Emperor and wish him well and want Prologue 14.
... turning a Jewish boy over to the army. After the train moved, Isaac raised his eyes. He saw before him dignified people ... turned to their Father in Heaven, and all of them stand in awe and submission and great devotion and recite the ...
... turned dark and stars flickered in the firmament, and the moon rose from the dark water and the black waves swayed silently. Little by little the sailors' singing stopped and silence spread over the sea. All that was heard was the sound ...