Šmuel Josef Agnon Bücher

A man returns to the war-ruined city of his childhood and makes a vain attempt to assemble a congregation for a service in the synagogue.

Revised and annotated translations from the Hebrew"--Cover.

English (translation)Original Hebrew

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. Only Yesterday quickly became recognized as a monumental work of world literature, but not only for its vivid historical reckon of Israel's founding society. 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?

Compiled by S.Y. Agnon, one of the greatest Hebrew writers of the twentieth century and winner of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, Days of Awe is the long-acknowledged classic companion to the High Holy Days prayerbook. Here in one volume are readings from the meditations from the Bible, the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Zohar, to deepen the spiritual experience of the holiest days of the Jewish year. More than three hundred texts. selected from the vast storehouse of Jewish literature from ancient to modern times, are arranged to follow the order of the synagogue service for the High Holy Days. "From the moment of its appearance," writes Judah Goldin in the Introduction, "[this] volume seemed as though it had always been here, as though it had always been the companion of the holiday prayerbook."