Alan Mintz

Ancestral Tales

Reading the Buczacz Stories of S.Y. Agnon

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Alan Mintz is the Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the editor (with Jeffrey Saks) of the first English-language translation of S. Y. Agnon's A City in Its Fullness (2016) and the author of Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry (Stanford, 2011).

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 440
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Juni 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 230mm x 160mm x 35mm
• Gewicht: 794g
• ISBN-13: 9781503601161
• ISBN-10: 1503601161
• Artikelnr.: 46483908

Autorenporträt

Alan Mintz is the Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is the editor (with Jeffrey Saks) of the first English-language translation of S. Y. Agnon's A City in Its Fullness (2016) and the author of Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry (Stanford, 2011).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: "I Am Building a City"
chapter abstract
The origins of the project of writing a cycle of stories about Buczacz are
presented in the story "The Sign," in which an Agnon-like narrator
experiences a mystical visitation by a Jewish medieval poet who models
literary creation as a way to memorialize the destroyed city. Although many
of the stories were published in the author's lifetime, scant attention was
paid to them then or when they were published in book form. Israeli culture
had a conflicted relationship to the Holocaust, and there was little
interest in literature devoted to the Old World life that Zionism had
sought to replace. There has been a significant change in attitude since
that time, and A City in Its Fullness has recently become the object of
increasing critical attention.
1A Baedeker to Buczacz
chapter abstract
The opening story of A City in Its Fullness is a myth of origins that
presents the founding of Buczacz as an arrested attempt on the part of
fervent Jews from the Rhineland Valley to journey to the Land of Israel.
This story is compared with the historical record, which describes an
economic emigration of Jews from central Poland in the sixteenth century
into lands in the southeast newly colonized by Polish nobles. The Jewish
community of Buczacz rebuilt itself after the Khmelnytskyi massacres of
1648 and the Tatar and Turkish incursions that followed. The community
experienced relative prosperity and stability as a town owned by the
Potocki family. The first book of A City in Its Fullness is devoted to the
town's principle places and institutions in the form of a grand tour
conducted for the reader, with attention given to both Jewish and gentile
space.
2Inventing a Narrator
chapter abstract
Writing stories set in a period beyond modern memory presented Agnon with
the challenge of a workable narrative premise. For this task Agnon gave up
the autobiographical narrator that had been the mainstay of his earlier
fiction and developed a unique narrator-actually, a set of variations on a
single premise-who speaks as a believing Jew within the historical milieu
of the stories. The narrator's views are aligned with the contemporary
rabbinic elite and, like the leaders of Buczacz, skeptical of mysticism and
Hasidism. His tone assumes the authority of the communal minute book, the
pinkas; yet although impersonal, and without a recognizable identity, he
uses the "I" in a garrulous and compunctious manner. This chapter describes
how the stories communicate simultaneously with the implied traditional
audience contemporary to the events and the modern audience reading the
stories as they appeared in Haaretz and similar news journals.
3Worship and Danger: A Cantorial Triptych
chapter abstract
Agnon examines azzanim, the cantors or professional prayer leaders in the
synagogue, not as employees of the community but as embodying the ideal of
prayer as a vocation. This construction draws upon the office of the high
priest in the ancient Temple service, the sacred poet of the Middle Ages,
and the romantic artist, whose self-sacrifice on the altar of his art
renders him a martyr. Discussing three stories about azzanim-about a young
woman with a gift for sacred music who must keep her gift hidden; a azzan
whose determination to serve the community without pay brings about his
gruesome martyrdom; and a gifted azzan who pays for his amour-propre
earlier in life by having to recluse himself from the profession-this
chapter examines the stories' tragic realization that leading the community
in true prayer inevitably leads to the danger of too close proximity to the
holy.
4Rabbis and Scholars
chapter abstract
The major novella at the heart of A City in Its Fullness asks whether it is
possible to combine two kinds of rabbinic leadership: the pure scholar and
the community rabbi. Whether the source is the Polish magnate or the
Austrian government official, government interference in appointments to
rabbinic seats is a factor that few Jewish communities can elude. The
novella concerns Buczacz's failed quest to find a rabbi who is equal in all
respects to the community's high regard for its own learning and piety.
Because of the ineluctability of gentile interference, the story concludes
that true Torah scholarship can almost never be realized by a rabbi
beholden to the community.
5Jews and Poles
chapter abstract
Until 1772, Buczacz, like many Polish towns, was owned outright by a Polish
noble, who was the source of all law. In the social space between the
Catholic land-owning Poles and the Orthodox Ruthenian/Ukrainian serfs, the
Jews operated as merchants, shopkeepers, and craftsmen. Although the
services provided by the Jews were economically critical to the Poles, the
latter despised the former and knew little of their inner religious life.
Two major stories imagine a set of circumstances in which these roles are
reversed and two great magnates become dependent for their lives on Jews,
one a great communal leader and the other a humble charcoal maker. The
chapter examines how Agnon uses established historical information to
create alternative history and reimagine a "corrected" relationship between
the two communities.
6Austrian Mandates
chapter abstract
The Austrian rule over Buczacz that came with the partition of Poland in
1772 brought far-reaching changes to Jewish life, especially during the
first decades of imperial rule. One change was the imposition of a special
tax on the candles Jews used for Sabbaths, holidays, and weddings. Agnon's
general approach is to examine the corrupting effects of these measures
within the Jewish community rather than between the community and the
Austrian authorities. One major story concerns a thug named Feivush, who
serves as an enforcer for a heartless tax farmer. Feivush is feared and
reviled by his fellow Jews, but then he himself becomes a victim. Other
tales focus on the marginalization of rabbinic courts under the Austrians,
which allows the violence of the wealthy to go unchecked.
7Disappeared
chapter abstract
One of the most hated measures imposed by the Austrians was conscription
into the imperial army for long periods of service. To meet the quotas,
Jewish communities offered inducements to the vagrant poor and forcibly
recruited youth who were insufficiently religious. The story "Disappeared"
concerns a blameless apprentice tailor named Dan, who is delivered to the
army by the Buczacz community to protect its better-born youth. The story
focuses on the community's apathy to the suffering of Dan's mother and his
secret fiancée, as well as the role of literacy and letter writing in this
changing society. On his way back to Buczacz after years of service, Dan
falls into the hands of a Polish noblewoman who keeps him captive for
several years. The story's sensational conclusion, in the form of this
woman's diary, describes her sexual attraction to the ex-soldier and her
victimization of him.
8Moments of Redemption
chapter abstract
The depiction of the Buczacz Jewish community under Austrian rule is so
negative that it threatens the very enterprise of A City in Its Fullness as
a memorial project. To counterbalance this, at the end of the volume, Agnon
explores redemption as both a theological and social construct. He locates
the potential for redemption not within the rabbinic elite or communal
leadership, but within the love of learning on the part of ordinary
householders. In a story called "In a Single Moment," the unmarried status
of an outstanding fifteen-year-old scholar is of great concern to his
parents. During the climactic conclusion of the events of a single day, the
boy weds a young woman who has been left under the uppah by an
unscrupulously materialistic bridegroom. The joy that suddenly floods the
community provides a moment of redemption, a brief but significant
recoupment of the community's spiritual glory.
Epilogue
chapter abstract
A City in Its Fullness represents an extraordinary instance of a major
writer returning to the golden age of East European Jewry and reimagining
it through the medium of modernist fiction. Although the stories are
carefully set within the facts of their historical periods, Agnon sometimes
arrogates to himself the freedom to "correct" the historical record by
fashioning stories that accord to their Jewish subjects the dignity they
deserved in their own time but did not receive.