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COPYRIGHT 1993 American Jewish Congress
Introduction
THE STRUGGLE TO PROVIDE AND MAINTAIN a Jewish identifty as the core of Israeli culture, in the face of the chasm in Jewish life opened up by modernity between the self and reason at war with community and faith, is an underlying theme in much of Agnon's work. He simultaneously developed this theme and reflected it in his writing technique, by using modern literary approaches to character analysis and plot development, together with traditional Jewish symbols, allusions and subtexts. Nowhere is his concern about the importance of maintaining the Jewish core in Israeli life -- indeed, in the lives of Jews everywhere, but even, perhaps, especially, in Israel -- than in his two novellas, Edo and Enam (1950), and Betrothed (1943).(1)
Betrothed, written in the midst of the Holocaust, sought to provide some reassurance that, somehow, the bones of Jewish tradition would yet live -- or, more precisely, magically come alive again in the Yishuv, in the newborn Jewish homeland of Erez Yisrael. The reassurance is conveyed in Betrothed through the mystical doctrines of kabbalah, that portray history as the pre-destined process of the liberation of the sparks of Divine holiness temporarily captured in a world of evil, and their ultimate reunification with the Godhead through a spiritually redeemed Israel (Jacob in the story) united with the Shekhinah (Shoshanah in the story). But Agnon adds a strong dramatic touch to his novelistic treatment, pitting the spiritual, feminine Shekhinah of kabbalah against six secular, lovely, but lethal, spiritually debilitating young women of the Yishuv, in a cosmic battle for the soul of Jacob. The latter, in context, is made into an anti-hero; while ambitious and dedicated to his own professional advancement, he remains passive, uninterested and even oblivious of the spiritual battle around him.
Summary of the Story
As children, living in the European Galut, Jacob and Shoshanah (before Betrothed starts) had sworn eternal faithfulness to each other while playing together at the home of her parents, who had reached out to Jacob when his mother died in his youth. Their betrothal is consummated in a ceremony in which she cuts off a lock of her hair and his, and burns the hair, and they both consume the ashes.(2) As the novella opens, Jacob is a young man living in the Land of Israel. His aliyah was funded by Shoshanah's wealthy father, Ehrlich, but started as an educational and career opportunity rather than as an expression of any Zionist idealism by either of them. Jacob has remained in the Yishuv as a teacher at a university, where he does research in the dead plant life of the Mediterranean, an activity "remote from the interests of the Jewish settlements;" not surprisingly, his cultural interests run to Hellenism rather than Hebraism.(3)
He lives in a secular city, Jaffa, where each person is busy "pursuing his own ends."(4) and associates with a circle of six similar secular young women; together, they become known as the "Seven Planets."(5) Oddly, there is not even the hint of any sex or romance between Jacob and any of them, despite their variety of origins, physique and personality. They spend time together in the homes, streets, and beaches of Jaffa, on the Mediterranean, under what seems like a remote, unseeing, starfilled sky -- bonded to nature, happy together in an innocent, almost childlike way, in a cyclical, unchanging existence, with no evident goals, cares or concerns. Jacob is passive to them, and to the land and its culture.
Suddenly, Jacob learns that Shoshanah and her father are coming to Palestine for a brief visit, at the end of a long, worldwide trip that has taken them to many countries, before returning home to Vienna. Meeting Shoshanah for the first time as an adult, after many years, he immediately senses a permanent attachment to her -- based more on their mutual childhood covenant than on any special feelings that she now engenders. But he feels undeserving of her, and unhappy, without knowing why.(6) Shoshanah seems jealous of his six girl friends(7) -- particularly of Tamar, to whom Jacob has been most physically attracted (although Shoshanah had no evident way of knowing this) -- and insists that Jacob repeat his childhood vow of faithfulness and marriage. But their future as a couple is clouded. First, there are her continued bouts of somnolence, interrupted only by a rewarding tour of the Yishuv -- in which she is impressed by the rebuilding of the land and language of the Jewish people,(8) while her father continues to view it as a place for the old, for retirement and death.(9) Second, Shoshanah's and Jacob's outlooks are fundamentally different. He values his freedom and his career, and looks at the world optimistically, as a place of opportunity. She sees herself as separated from the world, a world which humans have nothing "to be proud about."(10) Third, Jacob is offered an attractive new position in America, and he quickly decides that it's time to move on, even if this means leaving Palestine and Shoshanah.
At this point, Shoshanah falls into a virtual coma; her doctor's scientifically based prognosis is that she will die unless she returns promptly to Vienna for some unspecified treatment.(11) Jacob finds out about her illness and, this one time revealing a religious sensibility, prays: "Oh God,...save me in Your great mercy"(12) (emphasis added). Yet, he is determined to go do America. To deter him, Tamar attempts to seduce Jacob, but they are interrupted by the rest of the women, who succeed in moving the action, one last time, to the seashore, under the stars. They determine that one of them shall marry Jacob and go to America with him -- the victor in a race that reverses the Greek practice: the girls will race for the man. The night and the rite capture the passive Jacob into seeming acquiescence at his coming captivity. Just when it appears that Tamar is about to win the race, Shoshanah appears and overtakes the pack, captures her human prize, and crowns herself with the garland of seaweed which the girls prepared for the victor.
Story Analysis
The battle of the contending forces of tradition and modernity in Jewish history is portrayed in Betrothed through the Jewish community in the Land of Israel, as it struggles to create a new homeland for the Jewish people. Agnon priases those who love the land and its people, who come to the land, work the land, and stay in the land -- for whatever reason or motive. The Yemenite Jews have difficulty in reconciling Biblical texts with the world of reality, but -- unlike Jacob -- they continue to live and work in Israel, and to study Torah and obey its commandments.(13) The Russian Jews are enthusiastic and passionate to the point of incivility,...
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