YU to mark S.Y. Agnon’s Nobel Prize

The Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies will host a conference on the works and influence of Nobel Prize-winning Israeli author S.Y. Agnon in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his award. The event is set for Monday, Oct. 31, on the University’s Wilf Campus in Washington Heights.

The lectures will situate Agnon’s work in the context of his birthplace in Buchach, his adopted home in Jerusalem during the British mandate and early Israel, and the literary culture of his time.

Convened by Rabbi Shalom Carmy, assistant professor of Bible and Jewish philosophy; and Rabbi Jeffrey Saks ’91YC ’93BR ’95R, Agnon scholar and director of the Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions, other scheduled speakers include Dr. Zafrira Livodsky-Cohen, professor of Hebrew and director of Hebrew language and literature; Dr. Steven Fine, Dean Pinkhos Churgin Professor of Jewish History and director of the Center for Israel Studies at YU; Dr. Avraham Holtz, Simon H. Fabian Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS); Alan Mintz, Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature at JTS; and Dr. Wendy Zierler, Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

“Agnon was creative in an extraordinary variety of literary forms,” said Carmy. “In addition to his fiction, he produced anthologies of Torah and chronicles of East European life, all this as the great impresario of the Hebrew language in all its classical layers that made him virtually untranslatable. In recent years, a flurry of attractive and accessible English translations, spearheaded by the work of Jeffrey Saks, has made him available to new audiences.”

The conference is organized by the Center for Israel Studies and its Joseph and Faye Glatt Program on Israel and the Rule of Law, and co-sponsored by Agnon House, Jerusalem, and the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies.