“Those Who Err All Their Days, and One Man Who Erred Not At All”—A Tale in Honor of Purim They were both mistaken in a matter of halakhah. Such is the way of the world: shrewd men commonly have ugly wives, while the wives of fools are fair. When the husband looked at his wife and saw how repulsive a creature she was—how ugly her countenance, how displeasing her face—he said in his heart: this proves that there is no…
The bonds of friendship between S.Y. Agnon and Gershom Scholom are well documented in their writings and in the copious scholarship on the celebrated Nobel laureate and the revered professor of Jewish mysticism. In this context, the interview that Dan Miron conducted with Scholem about Agnon (broadcast on Israeli television in February 1981, a year before Scholem’s death) is noteworthy. The recording (part 1 not preserved; part 2 and 3 available) and the transcript of the interview (in Hebrew or…
Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, Director of ATID and its WebYeshiva.org program, is Director of Research at Agnon House in Jerusalem and editor of the journal Tradition. Thanks to Prof. Mordecai Schwartz and Andrew Katz of the JTS Library for their assistance, and to Curt Leviant, whose questions prodded this research. “All day I see the parchment burning, but its letters are soaring to heaven—and even at night my heart will not rest,” wrote S.Y. Agnon a century ago after the burning…