From Foe to Friend

The Nobel Laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon (born Czaczkes) grew up in Buczacz, Galicia, memories of which haunted and fed his literary imagination throughout his life. He settled in Jaffa in 1908, joining other members of the Second Aliyah to Palestine. There he adopted his pen name, derived from the title of his tragic tale, “Agunot” (Chained Souls). From 1913 to 1924, when Agnon lived in Germany, he belonged to the circle of Salman Schocken and the young Gershom Scholem. When Agnon returned to Palestine in 1924, he settled in Jerusalem and returned to Orthodox practice. From then on, the main branches of his literary creativity were the novel, stylized folktales and legends from Jewish Eastern Europe, and various anthological projects, in each of which he perfected a unique Hebrew style that was both modernist in tone and steeped in classical sources. Agnon exerted a profound influence on the first generation of Israeli prose writers.