Stories Between the Jewish Shtetl and Palestine

The Galician Jew Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes, better known as Samuel Agnon, was nominated six times for the Nobel Prize before the Nobel Committee deemed him worthy of this distinction. That was in the year 1966. Only a few months earlier, Manesse Verlag had published a new translation of Agnon's most important stories in its Library of World Literature. A coincidence? No -- in Palestine the struggle over water was raging. Israel was at that time diverting large quantities of Jordan River water into its own canal system to supply its extensive agriculture. The surrounding Arab states responded by attempting to divert two of the Jordan's source streams before they reached Israeli territory. Of course both sides fought back. Of course both sides struck in return. Armed cross-border raids with military and civilian casualties were the order of the day, and throughout Europe intellectuals were debating whether Israel or the Arabs were in the right.

And then the Nobel Committee (and shortly before it the editorial board of Manesse Verlag) decided that it was time to remind the world of why the British had assigned the Jews their own state. The award directed the attention of the (Western) world to the stories of a Galician Jew who depicted both the small shtetl of his childhood and the poverty of Palestine at the time of Zionism.

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The Jewish Law: Ruler or Tyrant?

There were enough reasons for the Jews of the early 20th century to yearn to leave their home shtetl for the Promised Land of Palestine. Many of the reasons were connected with capitalism and all the conflicts that arose when a devout Jew was expected to follow the laws of a capitalist world order. Samuel Agnon's stories are no pleasant reading just before going to sleep. They depict a world in decline, in which the old laws and values were changing more quickly than those who observed those laws and shared those values could keep pace with. Agnon's central theme is the 613 mitzvot that a devout Jew must fulfil to be pleasing in God's eyes. They give him stability, give him orientation, but they also prevent him from becoming part of the modern world. What, for example, is a devout Jewish woman to do when a strict rabbi explains to her that the path to her sister counts too many steps to be permitted on her only free day, the Sabbath? Samuel Agnon tells in his story 'Between Two Cities' what suffering the rabbi's careless ruling brings to two small towns whose inhabitants are henceforth separated by a virtually insurmountable distance.

Poverty and oppression -- not only from one's own customs and practices but also from an uncomprehending authority and indifferent fellow citizens -- that was the everyday reality of the shtetl. No wonder that in 'In the Heart of the Seas' a small band of hopeful emigrants comes together to journey -- as so many did at that time -- to the Promised Land. There is the rabbi and the ritual slaughterer, the butcher, the children's teacher, and the coral seller. They and many others prepare to emigrate to the land of their fathers. Step by step Agnon accompanies them on their journey. He knows it well. For he himself made it in 1908. And so Agnon narrates from personal experience the fears and hopes, but also all the profit-motivated small entrepreneurs who have made good business out of emigration. He confronts piety with a materialistic world. His almost biblical language depicts the joy, but also the disillusionment of our travellers, because the real Jerusalem has nothing to do with the golden city of their dreams.

Stories That Hurt

Samuel Agnon narrates without passing judgment. He strings incident after incident together and leaves it to the reader to imagine the horrors connected with events. And the reader cannot do otherwise: he imagines them, writhes with revulsion, almost wishes to put the book down because he can no longer bear the devout resignation to fate of the protagonists.

As for example in the story 'And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight.' It tells of the petty trader Menashe Hayim in Buczacz, that very Buczacz in which Samuel Agnon himself was born and grew up. Menashe and his wife Kreindel lose their thriving shop because a more affluent competitor covets it, and because the rules of capitalism award a shop to whoever is willing and able to pay more for it. Menashe and Kreindel are willing but unable. Yet instead of submitting to the rules of money, they toil, struggle, and ruin themselves to raise the money for the rent. In doing so their capital is used up. And there they sit, not knowing how to earn their living now. Kreindel, the more energetic of the two, sends her husband to the rabbi. He writes the bankrupt man a letter of recommendation in the proper manner. With this Menashe is to travel through Galicia and beg a small donation from devout Jews. It will enable him and his wife to make a modest new beginning.

But Menashe is proud -- too proud. He cannot beg. He cannot even bring himself to show the letter of recommendation to potential benefactors. Instead he wanders from town to town, allows himself to be invited to lavish suppers, and entertains his hosts in return with pious anecdotes. A man like him benefits not even from the best letter of recommendation. And when a wily schnorrer wants to buy it from him for a small sum, he agrees. After all, is this not the long-awaited chance? Menashe could use the money to reopen his business! Quickly to the fair to acquire merchandise! But what merchandise? Undecided, Menashe drifts, goes from stall to stall and ends up in the tavern. There he gets drunk. A thief exploits his stupor, steals his money, and Menashe is left with nothing but hopelessness and remorse.

But neither does the schnorrer benefit from the letter of recommendation. He dies only a few days after the purchase. Devout Jews find the letter and inform Kreindel of her husband's apparent death. She is devastated. Gone is the hope of a secure existence as Menashe's housewife. Everything has failed. And then? Will the crooked be made straight?

Well, Kreindel is fortunate. A capable man falls in love with the widow, marries her, offers her security and a position in the Jewish society of the shtetl. No more hunger! The respect of the neighbours again at last! The marriage is even blessed with a child, unlike the union with Menashe. She was never able to give him the son who would speak the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, for him. But on the night of the birth, while the whole shtetl eats and drinks before the house of the new mother at the father's expense, Menashe returns home.

What is he to do? He is devout and for him the law stands supreme. But which of the contradictory laws is he to observe? One law forbids him ever to touch the unfaithful wife again. The other condemns the adulteress to eternal punishment. To make himself known means, by every Jewish law, only shame, poverty, and hopelessness for both of them. And so Menashe's decision to do nothing makes the crooked straight. Through his renunciation he gives his wife the security she so ardently desired. And the reader is grateful to him for it. The eternal punishment from God that Menashe fears for Kreindel -- one can no longer quite believe in that today.

The Hope of Redemption Remains

And so the protagonists in Agnon who do actually succeed in reconciling Jewish law with the materialistic world are angels rather than real figures. Take the wonderful Tehilla from the eponymous short story, in which Samuel Agnon so very incidentally depicts the misery of the Jewish emigrants in the Old City of Jerusalem. For many who have emigrated live in poverty, in dilapidated courtyards rented out to Jewish settlers at extortionate prices. They find no work in a land that is foreign to them and in which solidarity among fellow citizens is lacking. Agnon depicts this vividly in his story 'The Letter.' It tells of a wealthy man of the land who is praised for his charitable deeds. But these are all of such a nature that it is always he himself, the wealthy man, who grows yet richer, and he, the celebrated man, who grows yet more celebrated.

Quite different is Tehilla. Tehilla is an eloquent name. It means 'praise and glory' and indeed every action of this very old woman is in praise and glory of the Jewish God. She came to the Promised Land as a wealthy woman and squandered her fortune to be a support and a help to the disadvantaged. When her money was spent, she squandered herself and her time. She is wholly absorbed in her faith, drawing from the knowledge of an all-benevolent God all the contentment, all the happiness, all the hope that she needs for a fulfilled life. The way she moves through sorrow, need, and misery is comforting, but far too beautiful to be true.

All these stories remind us today, just as they did in 1966, that there is a reason for the existence of the State of Israel. That reason is European antisemitism. Arab antisemitism arose only afterwards, after Europe had shipped the surviving witnesses of its human failure off to Israel.