Caught in the middle of an Agnon story
As we approach and pass through anniversaries, markers, certain dates, it can be painfully hard for all of us. Facebook memories at once remind us of wonderful things. Fun and funny times when we were parents of younger kids, living in different houses, doing different kinds of activities.
And at the same time, they remind us of the “before times.” Times when missing friends and family were here, times that probably felt complicated at the time, but now seem much simpler. Times when our impressions of the world were different. Times when simchas were mostly just simchas.
And yet, we find ways to move forward. And as we approach Rosh Hashanah and the new year and anniversaries and yahrzeits and even chagim and celebrations, the trick is to figure out how to balance both of those. The trick to moving forward is to find ways to stay connected to those memories and lost people and times, but to not get stuck. Not grind to a halt.
One way that I have found to both remember and honor my mother’s memory, and stay connected, deeply, to her, is through an Agnon reading group that I started. This has been an experience that I truly (and ironically I suppose) cannot find words enough to describe how meaningful and special it has been to me. My mother, Anne Golomb Hoffman, z”l was a professor of English and Comparative Literature, and among her many areas of expertise and focus was modern Hebrew literature and Shmuel Yosef Agnon in particular.
In her memory, I gather with a few friends and we read and discuss Agnon stories. Some folks have done graduate work in the area, some had never heard of Agnon before her funeral. Some read in English, some in Hebrew, and some in both.
When we read the English, we often choose stories from the Agnon anthology that my mother co-edited, called A Book that was Lost. And when we read in Hebrew, we use copies that I make from my mother’s volumes. The pages are filled with her notes in the margins, explanatory post-its, underlines, and circled words. More than once, her markings and notes have explained to me what Agnon was referencing, what I should focus on, or illustrated something I had not seen. She is teaching me and our whole group.
As I work to pick what stories we should read and how we should approach things, the irony of course is that she would have been the perfect person to help guide me. But, it turns out, my mother has sent me a mal’ach, more than once this year.
Wendy Zierler, another Riverdalian, knew my mom and her work well. And she has helped me curate which stories to read, what trajectory to take, and shared information and resources that have made our discussions richer. At Mincha on erev Shabbat of our shiva week, I was alone in the women’s section to say my first in-shul kaddish. Until Wendy walked in the door of the shul, literally 10 seconds before that first kaddish. And the reason this was so magical is that this was not here in Riverdale, but on the Upper West Side, where she just happened to be spending Shabbat. As a dear friend said to me later that night — of course if your mother was going to send you a mal’ach, it would be an Agnon scholar!
As you may know, some of Agnon’s writings were stories that are somewhat magical. Fantasies that melt away the time-space continuum. But when you read the stories, it somehow all makes sense. It is literarily-logical. Of course a boy in 19th century Poland would know about Rabbi Shmaria’s 12 years of toil to write a commentary on the Magen Avraham’s commentary on Orech Chayim in the Shulchan Aruch. Rabbi Shmaria having written that commentary hundreds of years before the boy would have even been born. The narrative just flows, the story evolves, with no need to explain or answer or even ask the question — how would the boy know about Rabbi Shmaria’s 12 years of toil?
And so somehow, I have not been surprised when, at times over the last 11 months, I have found myself in what feels like the middle of a magical Agnon story. Of course my mom can’t talk to me anymore. I can’t tell her about the Anne Golomb Hoffman z”l Agnon Reading Group. I can’t share with her how wonderful it is. I can’t hear her reflections and thoughts. Except that I can. And, it turns out, her words and thoughts were sitting in my house, in the very same room where the group takes place, all along.
During an Agnon group a few months ago, we read A Book That Was Lost, the titular story of my mom and Alan Mintz, z”l’s book. We had a great discussion, as usual. One question that came up was why did my mom and Alan choose that story for the name of their book – A Book that was Lost. Certainly it is a pithy title for a book, but nothing in this realm is ever just the p’shat. Zebras are never just zebras.
I didn’t know the answer and my dad had no recollection. When I was emailing Wendy about her thoughts on the next stories we should read, I asked her, as an aside, do you know of any discussions with them that might have elucidated why they chose that for the titular story?
Very quickly Wendy wrote back, sending me an article my mother had written for an edition of the journal Prooftexts that was published in memory of Alan after he died.
These are the last two paragraphs of my mother’s article:
“In Ancestral Tales, Alan recalls the decision that he and I made to title the anthology of Agnon stories that we edited ‘A Book That Was Lost’ and Other Stories. The title story, ‘Sefer she’avad,’ ‘A Book That Was Lost’ … offers an engaging account of the first-person narrator’s efforts to track down a book that he mailed in his youth from Buczacz to Ginzei Yosef, the book collection that eventually formed the basis for the library of the newly founded Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It’s a charming tale of attempted rescue on the narrator’s part. He recalls how he skimped on lunch money in order to send to Jerusalem the unpublished leaves of a manuscript he discovered in the beit midrash of the town, a manuscript that was itself a commentary on commentaries. But the book gets lost somewhere between Eastern Europe and Palestine: it never reaches its destination. Long after making his own move to Eretz Yisrael, the narrator tells us that he continues to visit the library in Jerusalem to ask if the book has arrived. ‘Haval ‘al sefer she’avad (What a pity the book was lost),’ he notes in closing.”
My mother goes on…
“A book is an object. A text is a fabric. A book that was lost: absence and presence. We wait together for a lost book to arrive. Agnon’s words and Alan’s too remind us of what we have lost, but also of what we have, and of what we may yet come to share. A scholarly community registers the loss and takes some measure of the life of Alan Mintz. We recall his engagement with us and his work with the texts that sustain our communal (intertextual) fabric, recognizing the opening he gives us to continue that work together into the future.”
As I lay there in bed, reading my mother’s article on my phone, I truly could not believe it. My mom could have been talking about me and the Agnon group, and everything my father and my sister and I are doing to keep alive her memory and her contributions to Jewish and Hebrew and Comparative Literature.
Then I remembered something. I remembered when that memorial edition of Prooftexts was published. I must have told my mom or Susanna that I wanted a copy. And somehow I received one. I realized that I had that article somewhere in my house.
Close to midnight I got out of bed, and with my cell phone flashlight searched for the volume of Prooftexts. I knew it had been on the big white bookcases in our living room. I went over and over each shelf. Book by book. But I could not find the volume. I remembered its brown color and its thickness, but I still looked at each individual book on each shelf, just to be sure. I knew that the Prooftexts volume was there somewhere.
After some time, I had to accept that it wasn’t there. It must have gotten moved to make space for something, or due to some activity of a child or adult in my house. Perhaps it was up on the third floor. I decided that I couldn’t take on that searching project at that moment, in the middle of the night.
I decided to check one last place — the cabinets underneath the bookshelves. I knew it was highly unlikely to be there, as that is where we keep big, heavy books — textbooks that we want to save and old yearbooks. I opened one side and only saw my Stedman’s Medical Dictionary — a once popular gift to give to someone when they got accepted into medical school, but an unnecessary book now. I closed the doors of the left-hand cabinet and opened the other side. And there, on top of a pile of something, was the light brown copy of the Alan Mintz memorial edition of Prooftexts with my mother’s words inside.
I opened it and read the first lines of her article:
“In his last book, Alan … described Agnon’s creation of a narrative persona who is not so much ‘a consumer or a beneficiary of the tradition of sacred song that goes back to the Temple,’ but rather as someone who is ‘himself a belated link in that chain.’ … the concept of belatedness brings the writer or the critic into the long line of conversation — debate, interpretation, elaboration — that is so central to Jewish tradition.”
I don’t know a lot about Agnon, but I know that he saw his modern writing as part of the continuum that goes back hundreds or thousands of years, a next link in the chain of Jewish writing and tradition. When you read his stories, especially if you read them with an incredibly wise group of (mostly) Riverdale women, you discover and uncover the layered references to Talmud, Tanach, Tefillah, and more.
And here my mom, writing about Alan’s commentaries on Agnon’s writing, that drew from hundreds of years of Jewish writings before him, is telling me that the scholar, the critic, the discussion group, that reads and learns and reflects on and unpacks all those links in the chain, is actually part of the chain. Adding a link, themselves moving the conversation forward.
And then her message to me at the end of the article:
“A book is an object. A text is a fabric. A book that was lost: absence and presence. We wait together for a lost book to arrive. Agnon’s words and Alan’s words and Anne’s words too remind us of what we have lost, but also of what we have, and of what we may yet come to share.”
And so my wish for all of us as we enter this next year, as we pass through dates and milestones, and yahrzeits, and simchas, is that we don’t get stuck. That we are able to see that we too are a link in that chain.
That we can connect to the past and learn from our teachers — no matter when they might have written their words or spoken their ideas. And that we are reminded that even loss can lead to creative work, to generative work. And that work is our contribution to the chain. At once connecting us to the links that came before us, and helping us to move the chain forward.
And that we can find ways to meld the time-space continuum just like we ourselves are in an Agnon story.