DESCRIPTION : Up for auction is a RARE and SOUGHT AFTER typical ART BOOK from the quality Bibliophil publishing house "TARSHISH" and its legendary owner and editor , The legendary BOOK DESIGNER and GRAPHIC DESIGNER - Dr MOSHE SPITZER.  This exquisitely designed book combines one of NOBEL PRIZE winner for literature SHAY AGNON stories " A STRAY DOG" with several LITHOGRAPHS and WOOD CUTS ( Or LINOCUTS ) which were created by the acclaimed Jewish painter AVIGDOR ARIKHA.  ARIKHA's pieces were done in the years 1953 , 1955, 1958 but the book was published ( FIRST and ONLY EDITION ) in 1960. The WOODCUTS are combined with the text but the LITHOGRAPHS are printed on one face only of separate leaves bound together with the book and they are possibly ( But not certainly ) original lithographs ( As was the format in another similar ARIKHA book " AFTERGROWTH  " where the lithographs were defined as originals ).  With his most talented , Quick yet very impressive drawing pen , ARIKHA provides the images of AGNON's stoty . NUMEROUS lithographs and woodcuts .The book was published in Jerusalem -  Israel in 1960 . The HEBREW LITHOGRAPHS were printed by Moshe Cohen from Jerusalem.  ORIGINAL illustrated DJ . Original illustrated HC. Cloth spine with GILT headings. 7.5" x 11.5" .  A few lithographs , Each printed on one face of a separate leaf . 96 pp. Excellent copy. Tightly bound. Perferctly clean. The DJ is slightly soiled with remaining marks of a label wich was removed from the bottom of the DJ spine.  ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images )  Will be sent inside a protective packaging .

AUTHENTICITY : This is an ORIGINAL vintage 1960 book ( Dated ) , FIRST ans only edition. NOT a reproduction or a reprint  .  It holds a life long GUARANTEE for its AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards.

SHIPPMENT : Shipp worldwide via registered airmail is $ 29. Book will be sent inside a protective packaging .Will be sent  around 5-10 days after payment .  

 Avigdor Arikha  (April 28, 1929 – April 29, 2010)  is an Israeli and French painter, printmaker, and art historian.Avigdor Arikha was born to German-speaking parents in Rădăuţi, near Czernowitz, in what was then called Bukovina, and is today in Romania. (See Romania during World War II) His family faced forced deportation in 1941 to the concentration camps of Western Ukraine, where his father died. He managed to survive thanks to the drawings he made of deportation scenes, which were shown to delegates of the International Red Cross. As a result of that, both he and his sister were freed and brought to Palestine in 1944. Between 1944 and 1948, he was in the Ma'aleh Hahamishah Kibbutz. In 1948 he was severely wounded in Israel's War of Independence. From 1946 to 1949, he attended the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem; its teaching was based on the Bauhaus methods. In 1949 he was awarded a scholarship which enabled him to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where he learned the fresco technique. Since 1954, Arikha has continuously resided in Paris.In the late 1950s, Arikha evolved into abstraction and established himself as an abstract painter, but he eventually came to think of abstraction as a dead end. In 1965 he stopped painting and began drawing, only from life, treating all subjects in a single sitting. Continuing on this path for the next eight years, his activity was confined to drawing and printmaking until late 1973, when he felt an urge to resume painting. His practice has remained to paint directly from the subject, using no preliminary drawing, finishing a painting, pastel, print, ink or drawing in one session. He is noted for his portraits, nudes, still lives, and landscapes, rendered realistically and spontaneously, but clearly bearing the lessons of abstraction, and in particular of Mondrian. He has also illustrated some of the texts of Samuel Beckett, with whom he maintained a close friendship until the writer's death.Arikha has painted a number of commissioned portraits, including that of H.M. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1983), Lord Home of the Hirsel, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1988), both in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Other portraits include those of Catherine Deneuve (1990) for the French State, or that of the former Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy for the city of Lille.As an art historian, Arikha has written catalogues for exhibitions on Poussin and Ingres for which he was curator at the Musée du Louvre, the Frick Collection of New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Israel Museum Jerusalem. His writings include Ingres, Fifty Life Drawings (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston/Frick Collection, New York, 1986); Peinture et Regard (Paris: Hermann, 1991, 1994); On Depiction (London: Bellew Publishing, 1995); and numerous essays published in the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Commentaire, Literary Imagination, etc. He has also lectured widely, at Princeton University, at Yale University, at the Frick Collection in New York, at the Prado Museum in Madrid, and at many other venues. Most recently, he was invited by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid to select a number of works from its collection and to write the entries for the catalogue accompanying the resulting exhibition.From July 2006-January 2007 there was an exhibition at the British Museum of Arikha's bequest to it of one hundred prints and drawings.From June to September 2008 the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid hosted a major retrospective exhibition of the artist. An exclusive preview was published in Standpoint Arikha has been married since 1961 to the American poet and writer Anne Atik, most recently author of a memoir on Samuel Beckett.Books on Arikha. Besides the many exhibition catalogues published by his gallery, Marlborough Gallery, these include: Arikha, by Samuel Beckett, Robert Hughes, André Fermigier (et al) (Paris: Hermann; London: Thames and Hudson, 1985) Arikha, by Duncan Thomson (London: Phaidon, 1994)Avigdor Arikha, by Monica Ferrando and Arturo Schwarz (Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2001) Avigdor Arikha Hayim Nahman Bialik (Hebrew: **** Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון‎) (July 17, 1888 – February 17, 1970)[1] was a Nobel Prize laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon (ש"י עגנון‎). In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon. Agnon was born in Polish Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, and died in Jerusalem, Israel. His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European shtetl (village). In a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator's role in literature. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style mixing modern and rabbinic Hebrew.[2] Agnon shared the Nobel Prize with the poet Nelly Sachs in 1966. Contents 1 Biography 2 Literary themes and influences 3 Language 4 Awards and critical acclaim 5 Death and legacy 6 Beit Agnon 7 Published works 7.1 Novels and novellas 7.2 Short stories 7.3 English translations 7.4 Anthologies 7.5 Posthumous publications 8 See also 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 External links Biography[edit] This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2018) Buczacz, Agnon's hometown Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes (later Agnon) was born in Buczacz (Polish spelling, pronounced Buchach) or Butschatsch (German spelling), Polish Galicia (then within the Austro-Hungarian Empire), now Buchach, Ukraine. Officially, his date of birth on the Hebrew calendar was 18 Av 5648 (July 26), but he always said his birthday was on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av, the Ninth of Av. His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi, but worked in the fur trade, and had many connections among the Hasidim, His mother's side had ties to the Mitnagdim. He did not attend school and was schooled by his parents.[3] In addition to studying Jewish texts, Agnon studied writings of the Haskalah, and was also tutored in German. At the age of eight, he began to write in Hebrew and Yiddish, At the age of 15, he published his first poem – a Yiddish poem about the Kabbalist Joseph della Reina. He continued to write poems and stories in Hebrew and Yiddish, which were published in Galicia. In 1908, he moved to Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine. The first story he published there was "Agunot" ("Forsaken Wives"), which appeared that same year in the journal Ha`omer. He used the pen name "Agnon," derived from the title of the story, which he adopted as his official surname in 1924. In 1910, "Forsaken Wives" was translated into German. In 1912, at the urging of Yosef Haim Brenner, he published a novella, "Vehaya Ha'akov Lemishor" ("The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight"). In 1913, Agnon moved to Germany, where he met Esther Marx (1889-1973). They married in 1920 and had two children. In Germany he lived in Berlin and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (1921–24). Salman Schocken, a businessman and later also publisher, became his literary patron and freed him from financial worries. From 1931 on, his work was published by Schocken Books, and his short stories appeared regularly in the newspaper Haaretz, also owned by the Schocken family. In Germany, he continued to write short stories and collaborated with Martin Buber on an anthology of Hasidic stories. Many of his early books appeared in Buber's Jüdischer Verlag (Berlin). The mostly assimilated, secular German Jews, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig among them, considered Agnon to be a legitimate relic, being a religious man, familiar with Jewish scripture. Gershom Scholem called him "the Jews' Jew".[4] In 1924, a fire broke out in his home, destroying his manuscripts and rare book collection. This traumatic event crops up occasionally in his stories. Later that year, Agnon returned to Palestine and settled with his family in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot. In 1929, his library was destroyed again during anti-Jewish riots.[5] When his novel Hachnasat Kalla ("The Bridal Canopy") appeared in 1931 to great critical acclaim, Agnon's place in Hebrew literature was assured.[6] In 1935, he published Sippur Pashut ("A Simple Story"), a novella set in Buchach at the end of the 19th century. Another novel, Tmol Shilshom ("Only Yesterday"), set in Eretz Yisrael (Israel) of the early 20th century, appeared in 1945. Literary themes and influences[edit] Agnon's study Agnon's writing has been the subject of extensive academic research. Many leading scholars of Hebrew literature have published books and papers on his work, among them Baruch Kurzweil, Dov Sadan, Nitza Ben-Dov, Dan Miron, Dan Laor and Alan Mintz. Agnon writes about Jewish life, but with his own unique perspective and special touch. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Agnon claimed "Some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read." He went on to detail that his primary influences were the stories of the Bible.[7] Agnon acknowledged that he was also influenced by German literature and culture, and European literature in general, which he read in German translation. A collection of essays on this subject, edited in part by Hillel Weiss, with contributions from Israeli and German scholars, was published in 2010: Agnon and Germany: The Presence of the German World in the Writings of S.Y. Agnon. The budding Hebrew literature also influenced his works, notably that of his friend, Yosef Haim Brenner. In Germany, Agnon also spent time with the Hebraists Hayim Nahman Bialik and Ahad Ha'am. The communities he passed through in his life are reflected in his works: Galicia: in the books "The Bridal Canopy", "A City and the Fullness Thereof", "A Simple Story" and "A Guest for the Night". Germany: in the stories "Fernheim", "Thus Far" and "Between Two Cities". Jaffa: in the stories "Oath of Allegiance", "Tmol Shilshom" and "The Dune". Jerusalem: "Tehilla", "Tmol Shilshom", "Ido ve-Inam" and "Shira". Nitza Ben-Dov writes about Agnon's use of allusiveness, free-association and imaginative dream-sequences, and discusses how seemingly inconsequential events and thoughts determine the lives of his characters.[8] Some of Agnon's works, such as The Bridal Canopy, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, and The Doctor's Divorce, have been adapted for theatre. A play based on Agnon's letters to his wife, "Esterlein Yakirati", was performed at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem. Language[edit] Agnon's writing often used words and phrases that differed from what would become established modern Hebrew. His distinct language is based on traditional Jewish sources, such as the Torah and the Prophets, Midrashic literature, the Mishnah, and other Rabbinic literature. Some examples include: bet kahava for modern bet kafe (coffee house / café) batei yadayim (lit. "hand-houses") for modern kfafot (gloves) yatzta (יצתה‎) rather than the modern conjugation yatz'a (יצאה‎) ("she went out") rotev (רוטב‎) meaning soup in place of modern marak (מרק‎) Bar-Ilan University has made a computerized concordance of his works in order to study his language. Awards and critical acclaim[edit] Agnon receiving the Ussishkin Prize 1946 Agnon (left), receiving the Nobel Prize, 1966 Agnon was twice awarded the Bialik Prize for literature (1934[9] and 1950[9][10]). He was also twice awarded the Israel Prize, for literature (1954[11] and 1958[12]). In 1966, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people".[13] The prize was shared with German Jewish author Nelly Sachs. In his speech at the award ceremony, Agnon introduced himself in Hebrew: "As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem".[14] In later years, Agnon's fame was such that when he complained to the municipality that traffic noise near his home was disturbing his work, the city closed the street to cars and posted a sign that read: "No entry to all vehicles, writer at work!"[15] Death and legacy[edit] Shmuel Yosef Agnon Memorial in Bad Homburg, Germany First day cover for Ukrainian commemorative stamp Agnon featured on the fifty-shekel bill, second series Exposition in Bouchach museum Agnon died in Jerusalem on February 17, 1970. His daughter, Emuna Yaron, has continued to publish his work posthumously. Agnon's archive was transferred by the family to the National Library in Jerusalem. His home in Talpiot, built in 1931 in the Bauhaus style, was turned into a museum, Beit Agnon.[16] The study where he wrote many of his works was preserved intact.[17] Agnon's image, with a list of his works and his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, appeared on the fifty-shekel bill, second series, in circulation from 1985 to 2014. The main street in Jerusalem's Givat Oranim neighborhood is called Sderot Shai Agnon, and a synagogue in Talpiot, a few blocks from his home, is named after him. Agnon is also memorialized in Buchach, now in Ukraine, where he was born. There is an extensive (relative to the size of the museum) exhibition in the Historical Museum in Buchach and, just a few yards away, a bust of Agnon is mounted on a pedestal in a plaza across the street from the house where he lived. The house itself is preserved and marked as the home where Agnon lived from birth till the age of (approximately) 19; the street that runs in front of the house is named "Agnon Street" (in Ukrainian). Agnotherapy is a method developed in Israel to help elderly people express their feelings.[18] Beit Agnon[edit] After Agnon's death, the former mayor of Jerusalem Mordechai Ish-Shalom initiated the opening of his home to the public. In the early 1980s, the kitchen and family dining room were turned into a lecture and conference hall, and literary and cultural evenings were held there. In 2005, the Agnon House Association in Jerusalem renovated the building, which reopened in January 2009. The house was designed by the German-Jewish architect Fritz Korenberg, who was also his neighbor.[5] Published works[edit] Novels and novellas[edit] The Bridal Canopy (1931), translated from Hakhnāsat kallāh. An epic describing Galician Judaism at the start of the 19th century. The story of a poor but devout Galician Jew, Reb Yudel, who wanders the countryside with his companion, Nuta, during the early 19th century, in search of bridegrooms for his three daughters. In the Heart of the Seas, a story of a journey to the land of Israel (1933), translated from Bi-levav yamim. A short novel about a group of ten men who travel from Eastern Europe to Jerusalem. A Simple Story (1935), translated from Sipur pashut. A short novel about a young man, his search for a bride, and the lessons of marriage. A Guest for the Night (1938), translated from Ore'ah Noteh Lalun. A novel about the decline of eastern European Jewry. The narrator visits his old hometown and discovers that great changes have occurred since World War I. Betrothed (1943), translated from Shevuat Emunim. A short novel. Only Yesterday (1945), translated from Temol shilshom. An epic novel set in the Second Aliyah period. It follows the story of the narrator from Galicia to Jaffa to Jerusalem. Sometimes translated as Those Were The Days. Edo and Enam (1950). A short novel. To This Day (1952), translated from ʿAd henah. A tale of a young writer stranded in Berlin during World War I. Shira (1971). A novel set in Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s. Manfred Herbst, a middle-aged professor suffering from boredom, spends his days prowling the streets searching for Shira, the beguiling nurse he met when his wife was giving birth to their third child. Against the background of 1930s Jerusalem, Herbst wages war against the encroachment of age. Short stories[edit] Of Such and Of Such, a collection of stories, including "And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight", "Forsaken Wives", and "Belevav Yamim" ("In the Heart of the Seas") from 1933. At the Handles of the Lock (1923), a collection of love stories, including "Bidmay Yameha" ("In the Prime of Her Life"), "A Simple Story", and "The Dune". Near and Apparent, a collection of stories, including "The Two Sages Who Were In Our City", "Between Two Cities", "The Lady and the Peddler", the collection "The Book of Deeds", the satire "Chapters of the National Manual", and "Introduction to the Kaddish: After the Funerals of Those Murdered in the Land of Israel". Thus Far, a collection of stories, including "Thus Far", "Prayer", "Oath of Allegiance", "The Garment", "Fernheim", and "Ido ve-Inam" (Edo and Enam). The Fire and the Wood, a collection of stories including Hasidic tales, a semi-fictional account of Agnon's family history and other stories. Tale of the Goat English translations[edit] " Forever (Ad Olam)", Translated and commentary by Yehuda Salu, CreateSpace, 2014. A Simple Story", revised edition, translated by Hillel Halkin, The Toby Press, 2014. Shira", revised edition of SY Agnon's final novel, The Toby Press, 2014 Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam, contains two short novellas. Twenty-One Stories, a collection of translated stories from "The Book of Deeds" and elsewhere. Israeli Stories, ed. Joel Blocker. Contains the stories "Tehilah" (1950) and "Forevermore" (1954). New Writing in Israel, ed. Ezra Spicehandler and Curtis Arnson. Contains the story "Wartime in Leipzig", an excerpt from "In Mr. Lublin's Store". A Dwelling Place of My People, contains 16 short stories about the Hassidim of Poland, from the Hebrew Volume "These and Those" (1932). Jaffa, belle of the seas: Selections from the works of S.Y. Agnon Tehilah, Israel Argosy, trans. by Walter Lever, Jerusalem Post Press, Jerusalem, 1956 Anthologies[edit] Days of Awe (1938), a book of customs, interpretations, and legends for the Jewish days of mercy and forgiveness: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the days between. Present at Sinai: The Giving of the Law (1959), an anthology for the festival of Shavuot. Posthumous publications[edit] Ir Umeloah ("A City and the Fullness Thereof") (1973), a collection of stories and legends about Buczacz, Agnon's hometown. In Mr. Lublin's Shop (1974), set in Germany of the First World War. Within the Wall (1975), a collection of four stories. From Myself to Myself (1976), a collection of essays and speeches. Introductions (1977), stories. Book, Writer and Story (1978), stories about writers and books from the Jewish sources. The Beams of Our House (1979), two stories, the first about a Jewish family in Galicia, the second about the history of Agnon's family. Esterlein Yakirati ("Dear Esther: Letters 1924–1931" (1983), letters from Agnon to his wife. A Shroud of Stories (1985). The Correspondence between S.Y. Agnon and S. Schocken (1991), letters between Agnon and his publisher. Agnon's Alef Bet Poems (1998), a children's guide to the Hebrew Alphabet. A Book That Was Lost: Thirty Five Stories (2008) In 1977 the Hebrew University published Yiddish Works, a collection of stories and poems that Agnon wrote in Yiddish during 1903–1906.  ****  Shmuel Agnon Biographical S hmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970) was born in Buczacz, Eastern Galicia. Raised in a mixed cultural atmosphere, in which Yiddish was the language of the home, and Hebrew the language of the Bible and the Talmud which he studied formally until the age of nine, Agnon also acquired a knowledge of German literature from his mother, and of the teachings of Maimonides and of the Hassidim from his father. In 1907 he left home and made his way to Palestine, where, except for an extended stay in Germany from 1913 to 1924, he has remained to this day. At an early age, Agnon began writing the stories which form a chronicle of the decline of Jewry in Galicia. Included among these is his first major publication, Hakhnasat Kalah (The Bridal Canopy), 1922, which re-creates the golden age of Hassidism, and his apocalyptic novel, Oreach Nata Lalun (A Guest for the Night), 1939, which vividly depicts the ruin of Galicia after the First World War. Nearly all of his other writings are set in his adopted Palestine and deal with the replacement of the early Jewish settlement of that country by the more organized Zionist movement after the Second World War. The early pioneer immigrants are portrayed in his epic Temol Shilshom (Only Yesterday), 1945, considered his greatest work, and also in the nightmarish stories of Sefer Hamaasim (The Book of Deeds), 1932. While these and other works such as Pat Shlema (A Whole Loaf), 1933, and Shevuat Emunim (Two Tales), 1943, are enough to assure his stature as the greatest living Hebrew writer, Agnon has also occupied himself with commentaries on the Jewish High Festival, Yamin Noraim (Days of Awe), 1938, on the giving of the Torah, Atem Reitem (Ye Have Seen), 1959, and on the gathering of Hassidic lore, Sifreihem Shel Tzadikim (Books of the Tzadikim), 1960-1961. **** S.Y. Agnon, in full Shmuel Yosef Agnon, pseudonym of Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes, (born July 17, 1888, Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Buchach, Ukraine]—died Feb. 17, 1970, Reḥovot, Israel), Israeli writer who was one of the leading modern Hebrew novelists and short-story writers. In 1966 he was the corecipient, with Nelly Sachs, of the Nobel Prize for Literature. BRITANNICA QUIZ The Middle East: Fact or Fiction? The literacy rate in Afghanistan is very high. Born of a family of Polish Jewish merchants, rabbis, and scholars, Agnon wrote at first (1903–06) in Yiddish and Hebrew, under his own name and various pseudonyms. Soon after settling in Palestine in 1907, however, he took the surname Agnon and chose Hebrew as the language in which to unfold his dramatic, visionary, highly polished narratives. Agnon’s real literary debut was made with Agunot (1908; “Forsaken Wives”), his first “Palestinian” story. His first major work was the novel Hakhnasat kalah, 2 vol. (1919; The Bridal Canopy). Its hero, Reb Yudel Hasid, is the embodiment of every wandering, drifting Jew in the ghettos of the tsarist and Austro-Hungarian empires. His second novel, Ore’aḥ Nataʿ Lalun (1938; A Guest for the Night), describes the material and moral decay of European Jewry after World War I. His third and perhaps greatest novel, ʿTmol shilshom (1945; “The Day Before Yesterday”), examines the problems facing the westernized Jew who immigrates to Israel. This is neither a realistic story (like some of the early tales) nor a symbolic autobiography, yet it can be understood only in the light of Agnon’s own actual and spiritual experience. 00:00 02:38 All Agnon’s works are the final result of innumerable Proust-like revisions, as is shown by the many manuscripts in existence and by the variety of the printed texts. Already there are two widely different versions of his collected works, one in 11 volumes (Kol sipurav shel Shmuel Yosef Agnon, vol. 1–6, Berlin, 1931–35; 7–11, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1939–52) and one in 8 volumes (Tel Aviv, 1953–62). The archaic structure of his prose presents great difficulties for the translator, yet even in translation his power is unmistakable. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today Agnon edited an anthology of folktales inspired by the High Holidays of the Jewish year, Yamim nora’im (1938; Days of Awe, 1948), and a selection of famous rabbinic texts, Sefer, sofer, vesipur (1938). An autobiographical sketch appeared in 1958. Translations of his works include In the Heart of the Seas (1948; Bi-levav yamim) and Two Tales (1966; Edo ve-Enam). ****  Shai Agnon: A Mystery Wrapped Up in an Enigma Truth is sometimes indistinguishable from fiction. BY BEVERLY BAILIS YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE   Hebrew Literature in Translation: A Reader’s Guide   Literature 101 My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help DONATE Reprinted with permission from the AVI CHAI Bookshelf, where birthright israel alumni can order free books and periodicals. In his acceptance speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize in literature, S. Y. Agnon (1888-1970), one of the most prolific and celebrated Hebrew authors of the 20th century, offered some insights into his enigmatic life and work. In his life and work, truth bleeds into fiction, making the two indistinguishable.   From the Pious to the Profane The writer is known for his short stories, novellas and novels, written in a variety of styles ranging from pious folk tales and gothic romances to psychological dramas. Agnon claimed that his inspirations were “first and foremost the sacred scriptures, and after that, the teachings of the medieval Jewish sages, and the spectacles of nature and the animals of the earth.” This image of himself as a pious and parochial Jew is central to the identity he constructs of himself as the modern Jewish writer. He is able to present himself as the writer of his people by conflating in his fiction aspects of his own biography with the history of the Jewish people. For instance, he claims that he was born on the Ninth of Av, the date that marks the destruction of both Temples, as well as the alleged date on which the future messiah will be born. Likewise, he links the two times his house burned down, once in Homburg, Germany, in 1924 and the second time in Jerusalem in 1929, with the destruction of the two Temples. He also acknowledges that his first immigration to Israel in 1907 occurred on Lag B’Omer, the day that commemorates Bar Kokhba’s rebellion against the Romans in the land of Israel. The very name “Agnon” is a literary construction intended to tie his fate to that of the Jewish people. Born as Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes, he adopted his surname and nom de plume from his first story published in the Land of Israel entitled “Agunot.” The name derives from the status of abandoned women in Jewish law. These women have been abandoned by their legal husbands and left without a writ of divorce. Without this document, these agunot are in a state of limbo, belonging neither to the world of the married or of the single. And as the literal meaning of the name implies, they are chained to this infuriating status. Trapped Between Worlds, Belonging to Neither In many ways, Agnon sees himself in a similar position–trapped between different worlds but belonging to neither–and his literature plays on these themes. The sense of longing becomes the impetus and source of Agnon’s writing itself, since it is through the very act of writing that Agnon attempts to alleviate the collective desire for fulfillment and the fractured existence of the Jewish people. The connection between autobiography and fiction or myth is also evident in the many quasi-autobiographical details found in his writing. The town in which he was born, Buczacz, located in eastern Galicia, appears in many of his stories under the anagrammatic name Szybusz. The fictionalized name, which literally means “error” in Hebrew, comes to represent the mythical shtetl landscape that serves as the backdrop for many of the stories taking place in the Diaspora. There are also traces in his fiction of other countries and towns in which he lived. After leaving Poland he immigrated to Palestine, and then returned to Europe six years later to live in Germany. Following the destruction of his house in Homburg by fire, he returned to Palestine in 1924. These different places appear in his fiction, along with many historical Zionist and socialist figures, and people he met in his travels. The traditional education he received as a child in the heder (a traditional Jewish school) is apparent in his work, as is his parents’ rich and diverse Jewish background. While his father’s family was connected to famous Hasidim, his mother came from a family of Mitnagdim, whose rationalism opposed the emotive mysticism of the Hasidim.  Agnon’s writing reflects a unique synthesis of these two disparate worldviews. A Unique Synthesis In addition to the many Jewish worlds he occupied, Agnon’s writing also reflects a unique synthesis of Jewish tradition and German philosophy and literature, as he was also schooled in German as a child.  However, his deployment of allusions from world literature, frequently play with the original meaning of the traditional texts producing an almost bitter irony that subverts Jewish tradition from within. What makes Agnon’s writing treasured and unique is simultaneously what makes reading his stories so challenging for the modern reader. While he is well known and admired in Israel, he is virtually unknown to those outside the circle of Hebrew literature. One reason for this is the difficulty of translating his work. Whereas many aspects of social critique and psychological realism come through in translation, the allusivity of the text, which is embedded with wordplays, acrostics and anagrams, is sometimes obscured when the Hebrew text is translated. Agnon’s language also poses a challenge to the modern Israeli Hebrew reader, who typically does not share Agnon’s encyclopedic knowledge of traditional literature. The language he employs is sometimes referred to as “Agnonit” instead of “Ivrit” (Hebrew), due to the foreignness and uniqueness of his idiom. Agnon’s writing has exerted a great influence on contemporary authors such as A. B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld and Yehuda Amichai’s prose. And his acceptance of the Nobel Prize in literature spoke not only to the universality of his writing, but also announced the entrance of Hebrew literature onto the world stage. Agnon died in 1970, and has become an Israeli icon. Agnon’s house in Talpiyot, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, is a tourist site today. One can visit the lectern at which he stood when he wrote his stories, as well as the many volumes of Jewish and world literature on his shelves. His life and work has become symbolic of the hopes and longing of the Jewish state, a state that is at once ancient and modern. And as Agnon’s literature so eloquently expresses, it is a state still caught between different worlds, in some ways belonging to neither.Avigdor Arikha passed away on April 29, 2010, at the age of eighty-one. Born in Romania, he survived the Holocaust and was brought to Palestine by the Red Cross in 1 944. After three years of study at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem and a near-fatal stint in the War of Independence of 1948, he won a scholarship to the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Though he spent most of his artistic life in France, he is lauded as a titan of twentieth-century Israeli art. This two-part exhibition, "Homage to Avigdor Arikha: Self-Portraits/ Illustrations to 'A Stray Dog' By S. Y. Agnon," recalled Arikha's formal beginnings as an illustrator and his lifelong preoccupation with self-portraiture. The first section, organized with the artist before his death, foregrounds his collaboration with one of the leading figures in modern Hebrew literature. Between 1 953 and 1958, Arikha produced woodcut prints and pen-on-paper and ink-on-paper illustrations to accompany Agnon's story "The Stray Dog," an excerpt from his 1945 novel, Only Yesterday; the resulting book was published in 1960. While meant to function as visual supports for Agnon's textual allegory in which a stray dog stands for the Jew in exile, the works also reveal the artist's gradual renunciation of figuration in favor of abstraction. Over a five-year period, Arikha's representation of the unlucky dog Balak shifted from a style of absolute graphic clarity to one of faint linear suggestiveness, a procedure that would be curiously reversed in his pictorial treatment of himself, as evidenced in the nineteen self-portraits that made up the second part of the exhibition. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In tandem with these latter works, which were made between 1948 and 2001, the woodcuts prompted viewers to identify the figure of the artist with the condition of perpetual exile--separated both from the possibilities of objective self-representation through art and, tangentially, from a homeland. … ****  ARIKHA – Casting a Giant Shadow By Angela Levine October 9, 2010 0 741 views Share on Facebook Tweet on Twitter   There is so much to write about Avigdor Arikha, artist, art theorist and curator who passed away in Paris in April of this year. Firstly, his life story is full of interest.  Born in Romania in 1929, he was raised in a cultured home until the age of eleven when he and his family were deported to a concentration camp. There, already a talented draughtsman, he made drawings of what he saw and experienced. The scraps of paper he drew on survived. Eventually rescued through the intervention of the International Red Cross, he and his sister, now orphans, were brought to Palestine in 1944 under the auspices of Youth Aliya to live at Kibbutz Ma’aleh Hahamisha. Studies at Bezalel followed, and in 1949 he was awarded a scholarship for further studies in Paris, the city where he would live from 1954 onwards, together with his wife Anne Atik, the American poet and writer. And then there is much that could be written about Arikha’s artistic journey that garnered him international fame and respect.  Over the years his style underwent changes; at first he was a figurative painter, turning to abstraction in the early 1950s. Later he would stop painting completely, confining himself to drawing and printmaking for seven years.  His return to color and to painting in 1973 heralded the production of an extraordinary body of work: portraits and self-portraits, landscapes of Israel and still life renderings of everyday objects. It was Arikha’s custom to paint directly from his subject in natural daylight with no preliminary sketches, finishing whatever he was working on – whether a painting, drawing or print – in the space of a  day.   Paying homage to the memory of Arikha is a two-part exhibition showing at the Tel Aviv Museum, curated by Mordechai Omer, a specialist in Arikha’s work. The first  part comprises a 19-piece selection of remarkable self-portraits dating between 1948 and 2001; the second, the endearing illustrations that Arikha completed in the  1950s for A Stray Dog, a story taken from Only Yesterday,  an epic novel by Nobel Laureate S. Y.  Agnon, first published in 1945. Self-Portrait from the Back in Underpants, 1981, oil on canvas, Collection of Phoenix Insurance Co., Tel Aviv As his self-portraits attest, Arikha was a master of this genre. Many artists are able to capture their own likenesses, but very few possess the skills to express within their paintings the intensity and emotion involved in the creative process. Arikha not only bared his emotions to the viewer, but also, quite often, his body as well; as in Self-Portrait from the Back in Underpants, (where the artist used two mirrors to correct the image reversal.) This detailed painting of his skin traces a scar in the area of the spine, remnant of the serious wound he sustained as a soldier fighting in the War of Independence. Self-Portrait in the Studio, 2001, oil on canvas, Collection of Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv Self-Portrait in the Studio is representative of a number of self-portraits in which Arikha depicts himself in a state of distress, mouth gaping open. Omer relates that Arikha first saw, and was deeply affected by, the image of a crying mouth in a 1965 exhibition at the Louvre where paintings by the Italian baroque painter Caravaggio were on display, his depiction of a screaming Medusa being an especially memorable example of this imagery.  . In all his self-portraits, Arikha has frozen some momentary gesture or expression on his face: there one moment, gone the next. In doing so he raises the question of what is reality all about and can an artist truly pin it down. Art critic Robert Hughes has related this feature so fundamental to Arikha’s art to the fact that this artist is “charged with curiosity about the world out there and motivated by an excruciating awareness of how provisional seeing is, how mutable, how rarely final in its deductions.”  Arikha’s Stray Dog illustrations comprise five woodcuts and 16 drawings produced in the 1950s employing ink and pen or a fine brush. ‘Introducing’ this series are some pencil portraits of Agnon, and also several of Dr. Moshe Spitzer who was instrumental in bringing Agnon and Arikha together, and whose publishing house Tarshish in 1960 brought out the book that featured Agnon’s story about the dog together with Arikha’s illustrations.   These prints and drawings present a unique opportunity to illuminate another aspect of the skills of an artist who Hughes considered to be “the best draughtsman of his generation, perhaps the best to have emerged in Europe since the death (in 1960) of Giacometti.” In these illustrations Arikha remains faithful to Agnon’s descriptions in a story whose  ‘hero’ is Isaac Kumer, a disenchanted immigrant of the Second Aliyah. In the course of this young man’s wanderings, he finds a stray animal and paints the words Crazy Dog on his back. (The dog plays an allegorical role in this story which is about destiny and fate, hope and disillusionment.)  This animal makes its first appearance in a pen and ink drawing by Arikha executed in his characteristic style of fine continuous lines skimming his papers. According to Agnon’s description, he gives the dog cropped ears and a mangy tail, but instead of painting words on the animal’s back, Arikha marks his forehead with a circle that Omer in the exhibition’s catalog text aptly describes as the Mark of Cain. Woodcut, 1953, Estate of Dr. Moshe Spitzer, Israel Museum Collection A trio of woodcuts relates to the next part of the story in which the dog standing in a Mea Shearim street creates panic, adults and children running away. Arikha renders these figures in flight as stylized geometric shapes.  People start to stone the dog who of course has no idea why he is being treated so brutally.  Eventually he goes mad and bites Isaac Kumer.   Brush and ink drawing, 1958, Estate of Dr. Moshe Spitzer, Israel Museum Collection The last part of this story is rendered in brush and ink drawings that are abstract in style, but of great beauty; their economy of touch and calligraphic presence recalling Chinese brush paintings. It is fascinating to see that Arikha was able to make these reductive drawings so highly expressive, evoking in a few curves, lines and black patches, the dog’s rippling body as it charges aggressively forward.**** Tarshish Books was founded by Moshe Spitzer (1900–1982) in Jerusalem after he had fled Germany in 1939. Over the next forty years, Spitzer designed and published more than 100 books — classics of European and modern Hebrew literature as well as medieval Jewish texts — that were rare in their beauty, both in content and form. In 1942, in order to improve the quality of the printing and to better control the layout and typography of his books, Spitzer set up his own typesetting studio which was also used by other publishers. In 1954, together with Heinz van Cleef, Spitzer established the Jerusalem Type Foundry, the first Israeli type foundry, and helped to create modern Hebrew typefaces like Hatzvi and David. — Sources: Haaretz, Goethe-Institut, DLA Marbach. See also Ada Wardi (ed.): The Graphic Design of Moshe Spitzer, Franzisca Baruch, and Henri Friedlaender: New Types Three Pioneers of Hebrew Graphic Design. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2016. (Hebrew edition: 2015). A monograph of Spitzer’s works initiated by Ariel and Ada Wardi was published in 2016 (in Hebrew only). The publisher’s logo shown here was designed by Avigdor Arikha.      ebay5111