by Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1887-1970) was born Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes in Buczacz, a small town in eastern Galicia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) to middle-class Jewish parents. His father, a furrier, belonged to a sect of pietistic Jews known as the Hasidim. From age three to ten, Agnon received a traditional Hebrew education at the elementary level, then studied with private teachers, learning Talmud (also in WLAIT 6: Middle Eastern Literatures and Their Times). He also read Jewish folklore and Hasidic literature. Agnon’s mother, a devotee of German letters, helped expose the boy to a variety of languages, in which he read secular literature in translation. Along with German, Agnon learned Yiddish and Hebrew. In 1908, having become active in Zionist circles, Agnon immigrated to Palestine, where he settled in Jaffa and worked for Zionist organizations and a literary journal as an assistant...