Judas by Amos Oz (2014, translation by Nicholas de Lange forthcoming 2016)

In January 2013 I read and posted on two short stories by Amos Oz, both published in The New Yorker.  Judas, set in Isreal in 1959, was a great reading experience.  It centers on Samuel Ash, a biblical scholar focusing on Judas, as depicted in Jewish writings.  Ash was supported in his studies until his father had a severe business loss.  He has taken a job as a companion to a seventy year old man.  The older man is highly educated, was in his younger days an authority on symbolic logic, he is versed in theology and Isreali politics.  Ash receives room and board and all small salary, his primary duty is to converse with the older man, to keep his mind occupied. 

Also living at the house is a beautiful mysterious forty five year old woman.  Slowly her relationship to the old man is revealed.  Slowly,Ash and the woman develop a relationship.

Ash in his biblical studies has a radically alternative view of Judas, who he sees as the first true Christian and the cause for the rise of the faith.  Agree or not, it is a very interesting idea.

We get a good feel for Isrrali life in the period.  We come to see the role of the Holocaust in the creation of Isreal.  

I found this a fascinating book.

I was given a review copy of this book.

AMOS OZ was born in Jerusalem in 1939. He is the author of fourteen novels and collections of short fiction, and numerous works of nonfiction. His acclaimed memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness was an international bestseller and recipient of the prestigious Goethe Prize, as well as the National Jewish Book Award. Scenes from Village Life, a New York Times Notable Book, was awarded the Prix Méditerranée Étranger in 2010. He lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.  -from the publisher

"Twofold" by S. Y. Agnon (1939, first time in English, translated by Jeffrey Saks in observation of Yom Kippur)

"The gabbai honored whomever he chose to honor with opening the ark before the beginning of each pizmon (prayer). The honorees screwed up their faces with a look of self-importance and walked up to the Holy Ark. The shoes on their feet shone like their clean-shaven chins. Their little sons and daughters stood in awe as they gazed at their fathers, who quickly opened the ark that others had just closed. When most of the congregation had gone out, but one pizmon remained in the machzor, the gabbai honored even me with the opening of the ark." From "Twofold"

An excellant detailed article on S. Y. Agnon

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Literature/Hebrew/Israeli_Literature/Early_Literature/SY_Agnon.shtml

Tablet-A New Read on Jewish Life, an excellant resource on all issues related to Jewish culture and Isreal, has just published, in honor of Yom Kippur, the first ever Engish translation of a story by S.Y. Agnon.  The story was wriiten in 1939 and was translated by Jeffrey Saks. Agnon was born in the Ukraine in 1888 and died in Jerusalem in 1970.  He won the Nobel Prize in 1966 and is widely considered one of the most significant modern writers in Hebrew.  Much of his work focuses on the conflicts people find in living in the world in accord with Jewish teachings.  

"Twofold" is set in 1939 in Jerusalem on the high holy day of Yom Kippur.  A man is in the temple performing the requisite rituals and praying.  He begins to think back on observations of the day back in Galacia when he was a young boy.   He recalls his father in the temple. Often the places of honor in the ceremonies are most given to the richest.   He thinks back on the ritualistic garments and their import. We can see the impact of the involuntary and willed memories of the narrator on his this day experience of Yom Kippur.  We see how ancient tradition strengthens him and connects him.

I am glad to have read by first work by S. Y. Agnon.

You can read this story here

http://tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/184824/s-y-agnon-twofold?print=1

Jeffrey Saks is the editor of The Toby Press Edition of the English language edition of the works of Agnon, forthcoming in 2015.   I look forward to this greatly. 

Amos Oz Two New Yorker Short Stories Project 196 Isreal

"Waiting" (2008, 5 pages)
"Heirs" (2007, 6 pages)

Project 196

Country 13 of 196
Israel
Amos Oz

1. Georgia 
2. Canada
3. U. S. A.
4. The Republic of Korea
5. Antigua and Barbuda 
6. Haiti
7. Trinidad and Tobago 
8. Ukraine
9. Cameroon
10. Botswana
11. Sudan
12. Dominica 
13. Israel

f you are an author and want to represent your country, please contact me.  If you want to do a guest post on your favorite story for the feature please contact me also.

If you are a publisher that has an anthology that is done in the 196 spirit, please contact me as I will be spotlighting appropriate collections.  

At first I thought I was setting myself an impossible task but a bit of research has made me optimistic  that I can find a short story from all 196 countries in the world.   I feel this part of the project will be completed.   I also hope to publish a contemporary short story from an author from all 196 countries and I know this is a crazy idea.

Yesterday I was looking at the year end best reads post on Parrish Lantern, a great blog I have been following for a long time, and when I read the glowing comments on a short story collection by Amos Oz, a very highly regarded Israeli writer, I decided that if I could find one of his short stories online then I would post on his work for the Israeli story for Project 196.  I was happy to discover that The New Yorker has two of his short stories in their free to the public archives.  As much as I can I am trying to post on short stories that can be read online.  (I will provide links at the end of my post.)

The stories are both set in a small town or village in Israel, they are about the same length,  both written originally in Hebrew and both center on a strange unresolved event that interrupts the routines of people with seemingly normal well arranged lives.  The central figure is left confused and in a state of anxiety about what will happen next.  The stories end with the central characters waiting to have their lives changed.


"Waiting" centers on the life of a government administrator and his school teacher wife.  They have twin daughters.  The only person on stage in the story in the husband.   They first meet in college.   Their lives are well ordered and, they have their issues like most of us do, but basically they seem happy enough.  Then one day his wife, very much a routinized woman, is late getting home from school.  Oz does a wonderful job of building the anxiety in the mind of the low key husband.  For sure I felt I was being shown something real in this perfectly narrated tale.  

"Heir" is the stranger story of the pair, I cannot really say which one I like best.  The central figure in this story is a man in at least late middle age.  His wife of decades left him with little or no explanation and moved to California.   He sold his marital house and now lives with his ninety year old mother, in need of regular care.  One day a stranger arrives.  At first the man tells him he does not buy from door to door salesmen but the man says he is there on a matter of business that will be personally important to him.   He is very vague as to what he is talking about.   He seems to represent someone or other but he does not really let on why he is there at all openly.  He seems to know more than he should about the man and his family.  What happens at the end of the story is very strange,on the surface it makes little sense and it certainly raises many more questions than it answers.

Both of these stories are totally worth reading.   

"Waiting" can be read here

"Heir" can be read here.

Author Data

Amos Oz (Hebrew: עמוס עוז) (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.


Israel, with a population of 7.5 million was created as a Jewish state by United Nations mandate in 1948.  It is surrounded by enemies.