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Shmuel Yosef Agnon

ש"י עגנון

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes in Buczacz, Galicia, and became 1966 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature. He was born to an affluent and urbane family where traditional Jewish culture dwelt side by side with modern European culture. While his father taught him rabbinical legends, his mother read him German stories.

Agnon began to write in both Hebrew and Yiddish at the age of eight and started to publish at the age of fifteen. He left Buczacz in January 1907 for Jaffa and never again wrote in Yiddish. But by that time, he had published some seventy pieces in Hebrew and Yiddish.
In Jaffa, Agnon gave private lessons and occasionally worked as a clerk. In 1908 he published his first story in Eretz Israel, Agunot (Forsaken Souls), using the pseudonym Agnon. In 1924 he took Agnon as his official family name.

In 1913, drawn by Germany’s lively Jewish cultural life, he left Eretz Israel. While there, he married Esther Marx and the couple had two children. At first, Agnon gave private lessons and worked as an editor. Later, a wealthy Jewish businessman, Zalman Schocken, became his patron and published his works. Agnon read German and French literature extensively, became a member of a circle of Hebrew writers in Hamburg and collaborated with Martin Buber on a collection of Hassidic stories. In 1924 fire swept his home and destroyed all his books and manuscripts, including the novel, In the Bond of Life, whose imminent publication had already been announced. He returned to Jerusalem where he lived until his death. Several of his works were published posthumously by his daughter, Emmuna Yaron.

Called “a man of unquestionable genius” and “one of the great storytellers of our time,” S.Y. Agnon is among the most effusively-praised and widely-translated Hebrew authors. His unique style and language have influenced later generations of Hebrew authors. In addition to the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, Agnon received numerous literary awards, including the Israel Prize on two occasions. In 2007, his work was named among the ten most important in modern Hebrew literature.

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