The Outcast & Other Tales, by S.Y. Agnon

Discussion will focus exclusively on  The Outcast, taking a deep dive into the novella.

The fifteenth and final volume in the S.Y. Agnon Library, this volume opens with “The Outcast,” in a first-time English translation, an affecting novella about the clash within traditional Jewish civilization between Hasidism and its opponents, and how that historic confrontation plays itself out within the heart and mind of one sensitive young man. Ten additional stories paint lyrical portraits of traditional Jewish life in Europe and the Land of Israel—worlds on the cusp of seismic shifts and historic transformations.  Miniature masterpieces which caused a complete reevaluation of his art and helped his readers understand how profoundly modern the master of the old-world pietistic stories truly was—a writer of world-class stature, recognized with the Nobel Prize in 1966, Hebrew literature’s only laureate. ZOOM.

 Facilitated by Shlomit Ritz Finkelstein