Against the Grain

Volume 27 | Issue 5 Article 31

2015 Booklover--Grace Forgiveness Unity Donna Jacobs [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons

Recommended Citation Jacobs, Donna (2015) "Booklover--Grace Forgiveness Unity," Against the Grain: Vol. 27: Iss. 5, Article 31. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.7197

This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Booklover — Grace Forgiveness Unity Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425)

he summer of 2015 forever changed the back to Poland, Ukranian, German occu- of paper came into his community of Charleston, SC. White pation during WWII and currently a part of hands, he would com- Tsupremacy raised its ugly head and the Ukraine. Jews settled in the area during pose his thoughts and jot down their essence in removed nine souls from this community. the early 16th century. Buczacz suffered the extremely concise language. Out of fondness The humidity in our summer air could well effects of these various footprints on its soil for Magen Avraham, Rabbi Shmaria took be the product of tears. So many eloquent but the Jewish community paid the ultimate upon himself to construe, interpret, and explain words have been written and spoken about price of lives during all the occupations. All it for every student to learn and understand. I this horrific event. And this will probably these elements as well as details from his own don’t know for how many years Rabbi Magen continue for a while as processing all of this life as an Eastern European Jew who lived in Avraham was occupied with his work. As will take a very long minute. Each of the many Germany and immigrated to Israel are captured for Rabbi Shmaria, I heard that it took him articles, editorials, commentaries, and speeches in Agnon’s writings. twelve years to define, elucidate, and construe I have read and heard have left an impression, A Book That Was Lost and other Stories is each and every expression. He left no difficult caused me pause or pushed me to contemplate a posthumous publication of Agnon’s short passage uninterpreted. At the end of twelve uncomfortable realities. However, the piece stories. The front sleeve of the cover describes years he checked and found nothing further to entitled Kaddish for the Emanuel Nine written Agnon as “the towering genius of modern He- add or to detract.” by Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute brew literature.” The Nobel committee honored “I can’t tell whether poems of Zion and of Riverdale, Bronx, NY published in The Post him “for his profoundly characteristic narrative Jerusalem brought me to Jerusalem or whether and Courier on Tuesday, July 7, 2015 struck a art with motifs from the life of the Jewish it was my longing for Zion and Jerusalem that different cord. My current literary choice from people.” Each section of stories is introduced, brought me to compose poems about them. my Nobel laureate list was a Jew. Weiss wrote: reviewed, analyzed, and dissected by the edi- Either way, it was my good fortune to go and “My father died a few weeks ago. The hardest tors Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman. settle in the Land of Israel.” part of the shiva (mourning period) was when it In addition, they punctuated the collections “So the years passed. The librarian went the ended. Friends and family were, by and large, with notes and a glossary. Their affection way of all flesh and the librarian who succeeded no longer visiting. I was alone in pain and for Agnon is witnessed by their own crafting him has also passed on, but the book was found. agony. I thought of this reality during my visit of words: “Many storytellers have arisen to What a pity the book was lost.” to the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston tell the story of East European Jewry, but the merely two weeks after the racially-motivated On One Stone: “As though in a vision I achievement of S.Y. Agnon remains singular. saw the rock and the writing inside it. I could massacre killed nine people.” He continues His canvas is wider, his erudition vaster, his with a description of his participation in the discern every letter and word, every line, every humor wrier, his irony subtler. Above all, like page of writing, every leaf. Had these writings Bible Study after the massacre in the very any great writer, his art transcends the limits space where it had occurred. It is a lot to take belonged to the root of my own soul, I would of its ostensible subject. To be sure, Agnon’s have read them, and out of them I would have in. After the study it was time for the kaddish, writing is inseparably entwined with the very the memorial prayer, for his father. He acquired fashioned worlds. But I don’t deserve to read particular culture of Polish Jewry and its them; I could only sit and look. My eyes would his prayer quorum and gathered at Folly Beach: continuation in the Land of Israel.” A variety “As I recited the kaddish for my father I wanted surround them like metal settings in which of translators participated in this project and precious stones are placed but which never to also say it in the memory of the nine Emanu- their names are placed at the end of each story. el martyrs. I wondered if my father would take combine with the stones themselves.” I will leave you with a sampling of Agnon’s The Sense of Smell: “I was worried that exception.” In the end: I heard him whisper, wordcraft taken from four stories in the book. “well done, my son, well done. The love that perhaps I had strayed from proper usage and Knots upon Knots is an expression from the done harm to the beauty of the language. I defies the rule will be victorious over the hate older Agnon and deals with books, writing, that defies the rule.” went and looked in reference books but found book binding and the community of word no support for my usage. Most of the books For no good reason, I decided to start at the craftsmen; A Book That Was Lost where Ag- either tell you what you already know or else alphabetic beginning of the authors who had non uses the metaphor of a lost book to depict tell you nothing at all. I went to the scholars won the Nobel Prize in Literature and planned the journey from Buczacz to Jerusalem; On of our time, and they did not know what to a visit to the Charleston County Library. One Stone set in eastern Europe and again de- answer me. Scholars know everything except The book I intended to check out during that scribing a relationship with writing; The Sense that particular thing you are looking for.” visit was S.Y. Agnon’s A Book That Was Lost of Smell deals with the influence of mystical and other Stories. My planned visit was the traditions in writing on Agnon. Thursday after the tragedy. It was a few days Knots upon Knots: “One who is not bur- Postscript: Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, before I went. The main branch of the library dened with things is free to do whatever his Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, is just a short distance from the Emanuel heart desires. I stood among my things and Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Dan- A.M.E. church on Calhoun Street. When I thought to myself, When did I ever have need iel L. Simmons Sr., Sharonda Singleton, and felt it was appropriate to go, I spent some time of you and when will I ever need you? And at the growing memorial before entering the there they lay, casting a shadow upon them- Myra Thompson are the names of the nine library. It is a powerful physical representation selves, a thick and thickening shadow. And if souls who paid with their lives demonstrat- of grace, forgiveness and unity in the face of there is no substance in a shadow, substance ing openness in the sanctity of their church an unthinkable act. Now it is time to read, there is in those who cast shadows.” while contemplating God’s word. Grace, ponder and process. A Book That Was Lost: “Of course, most forgiveness and unity are what their families Shmuel Yosef Agnon, born Shmuel Yosef of Magen Avraham’s commentary is obscure demonstrated to the community while griev- Halvei Czaczkes, shared the 1966 Nobel and enigmatic due to over abbreviation. For ing. May we pay attention and learn. And Prize in Literature with the German poet, though a man of great learning, he was poor, may eloquent words continue to be crafted in Nelly Sachs. His hometown of Buczacz has without the means to buy paper on which to their memory. a lineage that defines the politics and wars of write, and used to write his novellae on the face the region: originally Polish, then Austrian, of the table and on the wall, and when a piece

62 Against the Grain / November 2015