S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

It is told once they found there Freidele sitting with her friends, singing:

They have borne him far away

To wed a dowered maiden.

His father did not care to know

Our hearts were heavy laden.

One day an emissary of the rabbis returned to Jerusalem from the Diaspora and brought a letter for Rabbi Ezekiel. His father was pleased to inform him that he had negotiated the home journey in safety and now, as ever before, was bearing up under the burdens of justice and learning in their town. In passing, he thought his son might care to know that Freidele had found her mate and had moved — together with her mother — to another city, so that the sexton’s wife was therefore looking after his needs. Rabbi Ezekiel read the letter and began to weep. Here was Freidele, decently wedded, and here was he, fancying her still. And his own wife? When they pass each other she stares off in one direction, he in another.

Month comes, month goes, and the academy grows ever more desolate. The scholars, one by one, steal away. They cut a staff from some tree in the garden, take it in hand, and set off on their separate ways. It is obvious for all to see — Heaven help us! — that Rabbi Ezekiel’s soul is tainted. Sire Ahiezer perceived that his works had not prospered, that the couple was ill-matched, that the marriage, in fact, was no marriage at all.

The couple stand silent before the rabbi, their eyes downcast. Rabbi Ezekiel is about to divorce his wife. And just as he did not look at her at the hour of their marriage, so he does not look at her in the hour of their parting. And just as Dinah did not hear his voice as he said to her, “Lo, thou art sanctified unto me,” so she does not hear it as he says, “Lo, I cast thee forth.” Our sages of blessed memory said that when a man puts his first wife away from him, the very altars weep, but here the altars had dropped tears even as he took her to wife. It was not long that Sire Ahiezer left Jerusalem with his daughter. He had failed in his settlement there; his wishes had not prospered. He went forth in shame, his spirit heavy within him. His house was deserted, the house of study stood desolate. And the quorum that had gathered in the synagogue to honor Sire Ahiezer so long as he was there, now did not assemble there for even the first round of afternoon prayers on the day of his departure.

6

That very night, after the departure, the rabbi, seated at study, nodded over his Talmud. In a dream he saw that he would suffer exile. Next morning, following the counsel of our sages, he put the best possible interpretation on his dream, and fasted all day. After he had tasted a morsel and returned to his study, he heard a voice. He raised his eyes and saw the Shekhinah in the guise of a lovely woman, garbed in black, and without adornment, nodding mournfully at him. The rabbi started out of his sleep, rent his garments, again made good his dream, and sat fasting for a day and a night, and in the dark of the following evening inquired as to the signification of his dream. Providence disclosed to him a number of things concealed from mortal sight, and he beheld with eyes of spirit the souls of those bereaved of their beloved in their lifetime groping dismally in the world for their mates. He peered hard and saw Ben Uri. Ben Uri said to him, “Wherefore hast thou driven me out, that I should not cleave to my portion of the Kingdom?” “Is it thy voice I hear, Ben Uri, my son?” the rabbi cried, and he lifted his voice and he wept. Weeping, the rabbi woke out of his sleep and knew that his doom had been sealed. He washed his hands, drew on his mantle, took up his staff and his wallet, and, calling to his wife, said, “My daughter, seek not after me in my going forth, for the doom of exile has been levied upon me, to redeem the forsaken in love.” He kissed the mezuzah and slipped away. They sought him, and did not find him.

They say he wanders still. Once an aged emissary from the Holy Land stopped at a house of study in the Diaspora. One night he nodded at his devotions, and in his sleep he heard a voice. He awoke and saw that selfsame rabbi holding a youth by the hem of his robe and trying to draw him away. Frightened, the emissary cried out, “Rabbi, are you here?” The rabbi vanished. The youth then confided to the emissary that when the house of study was emptied of its worshippers, he had begun to fashion an ornament for the easterly wall of the synagogue, and the emissary had borne witness to the loveliness of that ornament and to the craft with which it was fashioned. But as soon as he had begun, that old man had stood at his side, drawn him by the hem of his robe, and whispered, “Come, let us rise and go up to Jerusalem.”

Since that time innumerable tales have been told of that rabbi and of his sojourning in the “world of confusion,” Mercy shield us! Rabbi Nissim, of blessed memory, who traveled about in the world for many years, used to say, “May I forfeit my portion in the redemption of Israel, if I did not behold him once floating off into the Great Sea on a red kerchief, with an infant child in his arms. And even though the hour was twilight, and the sun was setting, I swear by all that we yearn for in prayer that it was he, but as for that child — I do not know who that was.”

At the present time it is said that he has been seen wandering about in the Holy Land. The world-wise cavil and quibble, and even — some of them — mock. But little children insist that at times, in the twilight, an old man hails them, and peering into their eyes drifts into the gathering dusk. And whoever has heard the tale here recounted surely knows that the man is that rabbi, he, and no other. But God alone knows for a fact.

Agnon wrote a series of extraordinary autobiographical childhood stories. In addition to the two stories contained in this section, examples include “The Story of My Prayer Book,” “My Grandfather’s Talmud,” and “My Bird.” These are not children’s stories, but rather stories about childhood written for adults. The strength of these fictions derives precisely from this double axis. On the one hand, the stories are told through the child’s perception of the world, with all its disarming simplicity and disposition to wonder and delight. On the other, the symbols and allusions invoked in the stories point in the direction of weightier matters of the sort that trouble adult minds.

These are tales of initiation, and the two included here, “The Kerchief” and “Two Pairs,” deal with the moment that epitomizes the passage from childhood to adulthood in the Jewish life cycle: the bar mitzvah. Yet readers will find in Agnon’s stories little that reminds us of the lavish celebrations common to America. In the pious society of Eastern Europe, the bar mitzvah was less an occasion for festivity than a solemn marking of the boy’s arrival at the adult responsibilities and prerogatives entailed in full observance of the commandments.

Agnon does something special in his fiction with the bar mitzvah that is a sign of his modernity. While the spiritual seriousness of the moment is taken for granted, the emphasis is shifted from the initiation into ritual obligation to the psychological and existential experience of leaving childhood behind and encountering the unredeemed reality of the world.

Tales of Childhood

“The Kerchief” is Agnon’s bar-mitzvah story par excellence . It was originally written on the occasion of the thirteenth birthday of Gershom Schocken, the son of Agnon’s patron Salman Schocken. The story contains thirteen sections, and the first presentation edition was printed in thirteen copies with thirteen lines to the page.