S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

MISNAGED ( pl. Misnagdim): opponent of Hasidism.

MIZRACHI: party of religious Zionists.

MOHEL: circumciser.

NASO: a weekly portion (from the Book of Numbers).

NINTH OF AV: fast commemorating the destructions of Jerusalem.

NORDAU, MAX: author and Zionist leader (1849–1923).

PASSOVER ( Pesach ): eight-day holiday (in Israel, seven days) occurring in the Spring and commemorating the exodus from Egypt.

PENITENTIAL PRAYERS ( Selichot ): recited at night in the period preceding the Days of Awe and on the Days of Awe, except the New Year’s Day.

RABBINER: German for rabbi.

RASHI: Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, classical commentator (eleventh century) on the Bible and the Babylonian Talmud.

REB: Mister; sometimes rabbi.

REBETZIN: a rabbi’s wife.

REVISIONISTS: party of activist Zionists.

SANDAK: godfather, a person chosen to hold the child during the ceremony of circumcision.

SANHEDRIN: the high rabbinic court in the time of the Second Temple. Also, a talmudic tractate.

SEDER: the festive meal and home service on the first and second (in Israel, only the first) night of Passover.

SEPHARDI: pertaining to the Sephardim, descendants of the Spanish Jewish community, expelled from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century (cf. Ashkenazi).

SHAVUOT (Feast of Weeks): a two-day holiday (in Israel, one day), seven weeks after Passover. It is a feast of first fruits and a season dedicated to the memory of the revelation on Mount Sinai.

SHILECHEL ( pl. shilechlech): a small house of prayer (‘shil’).

SHTIBEL ( pl. shtiblech): a prayer room.

SHTREIMEL: festive fur headgear of Eastern European Jews.

SHULCHAN ARUCH (“Arranged Table”): rabbinical code compiled by Joseph Karo, sixteenth century.

SIFRE, SIFRA: midrashic works on Leviticus and Numbers, respectively.

SUCCAH (booth, tabernacle): simple shelter lived in during the holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles.

TAHANUN: a prayer of supplication, recited on certain weekdays.

TALLIT ( pl. tallitot): prayer shawl; worn by male adults at Morning Prayer.

TASHLICH: ceremony of the “casting off” of sins on the New Year’s Day.

TEFILLIN: phylacteries.

THIRTY-SIX SAINTS: perfectly just people in any given generation; their identity is unknown; their existence is necessary for the security and survival of the world.

THREE DAYS OF CIRCUMSCRIPTION: preceding the Feast of Weeks.

TISH’A B’AV (the Ninth Day of Av): a day of fasting in memory of the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians and the Second Temple by the Romans.

TOHU AND BOHU: chaos; see Genesis 1:2.

TOSEFTA: a collection of teachings of the first two centuries c.e., related to the Mishna.

TZITZIT: fringes at the four corners of the prayer shawl.zaddik (“the righteous one”); title given to the leader of a hasidic community.

ZOHAR (The Book of Splendor): chief work of the earlier Kabbalah (end of thirteenth century).

I nasmuch as the author concentrates upon characters rather than plot action, a list of main characters and their salient features provides the direct path to a comprehension of the world of Szibucz in A Guest for the Night. In the opening nine chapters of the novel Agnon sets the tone for the remaining 71 chapters, which constitute variations on those tones and basic themes. In the initial nine chapters the reader encounters:

The Guest — The Narrator; a middle-aged author of some renown and native of Szibucz; a resident of Jerusalem on a return visit to his hometown. While the Guest shares many biographical details with Agnon himself, it is important not to confuse the author and his first-person narrator, despite the many clear autobiographical projections into the novel.

Rubberovitch — Train dispatcher on the Szibucz Station platform; his missing arm has been replaced with a rubber prosthesis.

The “Divorcee” — Former wife of Reb Hayim, who runs the “other hotel” in town, implied to be a brothel.

Daniel Bach — Son of Reb Shlomo; walks on a wooden leg, having lost his own in an accident, after his faith had been lost through witnessing the atrocities of the War. He is a sympathetic skeptic and voice of the feeling of despair in the town.

Elimelech Kaisar — An embittered and sarcastic figure; gives the key to the Beit Midrash to the Guest.

Zommer — The innkeeper and his wife who run the pension the Guest resides in through most of his stay in town.

Dolik and Lolik — The innkeeper’s course sons.

Babtchi — The innkeeper’s elder daughter; a lawyer’s secretary.

Rachel Zommer — The innkeeper’s sensitive and charming youngest daughter, and object of the Guest’s attention. Marries Yeruham Freeman.

Yeruham Bach — The dead son of Reb Shlomo; brother of Daniel. He had left for the Land of Israel where he was killed in the Arab riots prior to the beginning of the novel’s action. His comrades at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel offer to bring his father to live with them.

Reb Shlomo Bach — The serenely pious, old Cantor of the town, a patriarch of the central family in the novel. He leaves Szibucz for the Land of Israel where he takes up residence at novel’s end.

Sara Pearl Bach — Daniel’s wife; a midwife by training.

Krolka — The non-Jewish maid in the Zommer’s hotel.

After the ninth chapter we encounter:

Schuster — The tailor, and his wife, both returned from Berlin to Szibucz after years of absence; he makes a winter coat for the narrator.

Yeruham Freeman — In Hebrew his last name is Hofshi, rendered into English as Freeman, i.e., free of the yolk of commandments; a young leftist who had been expelled from the Land of Israel, and now repairs roads for the local municipality; he marries Rachel Zommer.

Freide the Kaiserin — Elimelech Kaiser’s mother, once the governess for the narrator’s mother; she dies on Shavuot, at the end of spring.

Hanoch — The humble wagoner, who is lost at the beginning of winter; his body is not discovered until spring.

Reb Hayim — Once a great rabbinic authority, but now a bent, mute figure living in the Beit Midrash after his return from Siberia; he dies toward the end of the novel.

Erela Bach — Daniel’s daughter, a schoolteacher in town.

Raphael Bach — Daniel’s sickly son, prone to hallucinations.

The Town Rabbi — An unimportant but pompous man who uses the Torah as a weapon against his adversaries.

Sarah — Widow of a famous scholar; impoverished, she sells the narrator a manuscript of a rabbinic study written by her late husband’s grandfather. It had often been used as a charm for women in childbirth.

Pinhas Aryeh — The rabbi’s son, an important official in religious politics in the large cities, now home on a brief visit.

Zvi — Leader of a group of Zionist pioneers in a nearby village.

Aaron Schutzling — A boyhood friend of the narrator’s, now a traveling salesman, back in Szibucz for a visit to his sister, Genendel.

Knabenhut — The saintly socialist leader who had died several years earlier in Vienna; he had been a major figure in the narrator’s and Schutzling’s youth.

Leibtche Bodenhaus — A ludicrous self-styled poet.

Zippora and Hannah — Reb Hayim’s daughters.

Zechariah Rosen — A fodder merchant, with an inflated concept of his ancestors’ importance.

Dr. Kuba Milch — A kindly, poor doctor, the narrator’s boyhood friend.

Anton Jacobowitz — A Gentile pig-breeder.

Zwirn — A rapacious lawyer.

Ignatz — A beggar; his nose was destroyed in the War, leaving a gaping hole on his face.