The Gavriel Tirosh Affair

Prof. Ruth R. Wisse returns to Agnon House’s online programming for her annual conversation with Rabbi Jeffrey Saks (Sunday, January 4 at 8:00 pm Israel time on Zoom). Wisse has recently been re-engaging with Yitzhak Shalev’s 1964 novel, The Gavriel Tirosh Affair, and is responsible for its upcoming publication in English (Toby Press, 2026). She will discuss with us why she finds Shalev’s best-known Hebrew novel uniquely relevant for our particular moment, and why she initiated its translation by Hillel Halkin.

Set in 1936, during the British Mandate for Palestine, the novel portrays accelerating Arab rioting, the British response of limiting the entry of Jews fleeing Europe, and Zionist leadership exercising a policy of “restraint.” Mr. Gavriel Tirosh, a new history teacher in a Jerusalem high school is convinced that a group of his students can be educated to help chart the course of history by changing the way Jews respond to being threatened and displaced. Recalling that fateful time, The Gavriel Tirosh Affair takes stock of what the students and their teacher accomplish. It is astonishing how many of the challenges in the novel remain strikingly relevant today.

Yitzhak Shalev (1919–1992) grew up in Jerusalem, where he lived and raised his family (among them his son, the novelist Meir Shalev). He began his career as a high school teacher, and was a pioneer of teaching the Bible through touring the Land of Israel. Known principally as a poet, he also published three novels, including The Gavriel Tirosh Affair (Parashat Gavriel Tirosh), as well as countless essays on public affairs, literature, and the Bible.

Prof. Ruth R. Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, emerita, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Tikvah Fund. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and Humanities and the National Jewish Book Award, and the author, most recently, of No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (Princeton University Press), and a memoir, Free as a Jew.

Sunday, January 4, 2026 on Zoom at 1:00 pm (ET) = 8:00 pm (Israel)

This program is supported by a generous grant from The Morris and Beverly Baker Foundation.