Agnon’s “Only Yesterday” & Today

Join Jeffrey Saks for a 3-part series in English on S.Y. Agnon’s magnum opus, “Only Yesterday” (Temol Shilshom), as Jerusalem’s Agnon House begins the countdown to the 80th anniversary of the novel’s publication. In “Only Yesterday” Hebrew’s only Nobel laureate explored the tensions between the old world and the new, the Diaspora and the return to the Land of Israel, religion and secularism, faith and doubt, and much more. It contains the most vivid portraits of Jerusalem and Jaffa during the Second Aliyah and the struggle for a new, revived Jewish existence in Eretz Yisrael.

Each session will cover a different stand-alone theme in the novel, and together will serve as a type of guided reading for those who wish to make their way into Hebrew literature’s greatest novel, whether one reads in the original or in translation.

Rabbi Jeffrey Saks is Director of Research at Agnon House.
Live in-person at Agnon House, 16 Klausner Street, Jerusalem
3 Wednesdays at 7:00 PM: November 19, November 26 & December 3.