Shmuel yosef agnon biography of donald

He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. In English, his works are published under the name S. His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון; August 8, – February 17, ) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer.

They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European shtetl village. In a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator 's role in literature. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style, mixing modern and rabbinic Hebrew. Officially, his date of birth in the Hebrew calendar was 18 Av July However, he always said his birthday was on the fast day of Tisha B'Av , the commemoration of many disasters in Jewish history.

His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi but worked in the fur trade and had many connections among the Hasidim. His mother's side had ties to the Misnagdim , a parallel religious movement opposed to Hasidic Judaism. Shmuel did not attend school; he was schooled by his parents.

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At the age of eight, he began to write in Hebrew and Yiddish. At the age of 15, he published his first poem — a Yiddish poem about the Kabbalist Joseph della Reina. He continued to write poems and stories in Hebrew and Yiddish that were published in Galicia. In , he moved to Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine. He used the pen name "Agnon," derived from the title of the story, which he adopted as his official surname in