by S. Y. Agnon
The sand was damp and firmly packed; the moon lay on the dim beach, and the dim beach was its mirror. Like drawn bows to which the arrows had not yet been fitted stood the six girls, each waiting for the word that would set her off. But the word was still unspoken; it seemed that Rechnitz had forgotten all about their agreement of a moment ago, or perhaps he had not forgotten and that was the cause of his delay. One girl asked, “Why is he taking so long?” And another said, “Come on, Dr. Rechnitz, say the word!”
Then Jacob, in fear and trembling, called, “One!” To left and right of him the girls quivered with excitement, so that the very sands beneath their feet quivered too. As for Rechnitz, he too was trembling, and perhaps more than they. Suddenly Rachel cried, “Wait, Jacob, wait!” She left her place, knelt down in front of Rechnitz, took the wreath from her arm and passed it to him before going back to stand with her comrades. “Now, Doctor,” she said, “you can say, ‘two, three.’ ” Rechnitz heard her but did not heed, or heeded her but did not hear. Then abruptly the words broke from his lips of their own accord and a voice was heard saying, “One, two, three!” and the girls shot off on their run.
XXXII
Jacob held the garland that Rachel Heilperin had plaited from the dried seaweeds she had found on his table. He looked about him, uncertainly. The six girls raced side by side until one went twisting ahead, like a ball of twine that has dropped from the hands of the knitter. Then she was caught up and returned to the cluster of her companions. Again the rank was broken, by one here and one there, until one girl outpaced all the rest for a time, only to be overtaken; and again the group came together and again broke up. His eyes began to burn painfully; still he watched the running girls. He pricked up his ears to hear the sound of their feet, though this was difficult to catch, for now the tide was rising and the noise of the waves kept breaking through.
At the sound of the waves, at the sight of the limitless expanse of sea, Rechnitz closed his eyes. And now he saw his mother kneeling down before him. He was a small boy; she was threading a new tie round his collar, for it was the day Shoshanah was born and he was invited to the Consul’s house. But surely, thought Jacob to himself, she can’t be my mother, and it goes without saying that she isn’t Shoshanah’s mother either, because one is far from here and the other is dead; if I open my eyes I shall see that this is nothing but an optical illusion. The illusion went so far as to present him at once with his own mother and with Shoshanah’s; and since one object could not be two, it followed of necessity that here was neither his own mother nor Shoshanah’s. But if so, who was she? Shoshanah herself, perhaps? Of course not, for Shoshanah was ill in bed.
He opened his eyes and saw that all was but the shadow of an image, what a man compares to what he actually sees. Of course this was neither his mother nor Shoshanah’s mother nor Shoshanah, but Leah and Rachel and Asnat and Raya and Mira and Tamara. Jacob shifted the wreath from one hand to the other and looked across at the girls who were racing side by side, or one close after the other, each trying to outstrip her companion. Rachel was as light-footed as a gazelle; it seemed likely that she would outrun the rest. But Leah, the deliberate one who measured all her movements, now passed Rachel, and Mira overtook Leah, naturally enough, since she was so accustomed to exercise and running. Finally she was left behind Asnat, with Rachel and Raya outstripping them both. Little Tamara vanished into thin air, she was swallowed up in space; but again she appeared, only to be swallowed up again and vanish from sight. Yet apparently she had managed to pass her companions. At first it had made no difference to Jacob who would outrun whom; now he felt some regret as he saw Tamara beating them all. At least there was some comfort in the thought that the old cemetery was far away and that one of her friends would probably get ahead before she could reach it. Indeed, a figure was now to be seen running ahead of Tamara, but since she was a good way off one could not tell quite who she was. Jacob shut his eyes and left it for time to decide. But time waited and did not defer to Jacob.
A good while passed. Rechnitz stood motionless. What has happened? he wondered. By now they should have returned, but they are not here yet. He looked around him. Heaven and earth, land and sea, were all confounded, and the waves of the sea were raised on high, the waves crashed like thunder, and the sound of the girls’ running feet could not be heard. Why haven’t they come back? he asked himself. The sea grew even vaster, its waves rubbed against the dry land, but there was no sound of the girls’ feet, no sight of the girls themselves. Where had they gone, where had they vanished?
Rechnitz hung the wreath over his arm and began to run. He ran until he reached the place and found them all there, as well as one who had not been with them at the start. She was in her nightgown, like a maiden suddenly alarmed in her sleep. Silent and fearful stood the girls, and with them stood Shoshanah Ehrlich, who had outstripped them all in the race. Neither Leah nor Rachel nor Asnat nor Raya nor Mira nor Tamara had seen her running, yet each of them had been aware in the course of the race that someone was ahead of her, without knowing this someone as Shoshanah Ehrlich, Jacob’s friend, who for many days and weeks had been asleep, never rising from her bed. With fear in their souls they forgot the garland and their agreement with Jacob. And Jacob, too, forgot all this as he stood before Shoshanah.
Suddenly there was a voice calling him by name, a voice that came, as it were, from beneath Shoshanah’s eyelashes. Jacob shut his eyes and replied in a whisper, “Shoshanah, are you here?”
Shoshanah’s eyelashes signaled assent. She put out her hands, took the crown from Jacob’s arm and placed it on her head.
Here, for the time being, we have brought to an end our account of the affairs of Jacob Rechnitz and Shoshanah Ehrlich. These are the same Shoshanah and Jacob who were betrothed to one another through a solemn vow. Because of it, we have called this whole account “Betrothed,” though at first we had thought to call it “The Seven Maidens.”
Annotations to “Betrothed”
3. Jaffa / An ancient port city, and main center of the Second Aliyah and Jewish settlement in the early 20th century; today the southernmost part of the modern municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Agnon lived in Jaffa when he first arrived in the Land of Israel in 1908, roughly the same time as the setting of this story.
3. Daily cover / Cf. Deuteronomy 33:12.
3. Ishmaelites / Muslims.
3. Jacob Rechnitz / As with many of Agnon’s characters, it is likely that the author has encoded a form of “midrash” into our protagonist’s name. Jacob is reminiscent of the Biblical forefather, whose name (Ya’akov in Hebrew) carries a meaning of “to circumvent” or to be “crooked” (Genesis 25:26, but also 27:36). Recall that the Biblical Jacob was manipulated to marry a woman against his will (Genesis 29), as is that other scholar in Agnon’s writing, Akavia Mazal – whose first name is etymologically identical with Ya’akov/Jacob – in “In the Prime of her Life” in Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town and Other Novellas (Toby Press, 2014). Rechnitz is a town in Austrian Burgenland, near the Hungarian border, but may evoke “recht” meaning right or proper. If so, Jacob Rechnitz’s name embodies the coincidence of opposites: a crooked uprightness, and may recall Agnon’s early novella of misaligned love, “And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight” (VeHaya He’Akov LeMishor, cf. Isaiah 40:4), forthcoming in translation from Toby Press. Avraham Holtz suggests that Rechnitz might be a Hebrew anagram for nitzrakh – meaning “needy”.
Ze’ev Tiomkin
4. Fever of land speculation / Wave of land speculation in and around 1891, coordinated by Hovevei Zion leader Ze’ev (Vladimir) Tiomkin (1861–1927), leading to the Ottoman Government forbidding land sales in Palestine to Jews, resulting in widespread bankruptcies.
4. Turk / The Ottoman Turks ruled the Land of Israel from 1517 to 1917.
4. Council of the Lovers of Zion in Odessa / The Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) were European Zionist groups, founded in the 1880s to promote Jewish immigration and agricultural settlement in P
alestine. The Odessa Committee was the branch of the movement in Russia, recognized as an official charity by the authorities.
HaShilo’ah
5. HaShilo’ah / Monthly Hebrew journal founded by Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha’Am) in 1896, covering Jewish life, literature and culture.
5. Razsvyet / “The Dawn”; Russian-language Zionist weekly, published in St. Petersburg between 1907–10.
Caulerpa prolifera
6. My vineyard / Cf. Song of Songs 1:6.
6. Caulerpa / A genus of seaweeds in the family Caulerpaceae, the name means “creeping stem”.
6. Cryptogam / A plant that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds.
7. Hovered over the face of the waters / Cf. Genesis 1:2.
7. Ehrlich / German family name meaning “honest” or “honorable” or “upright”; cf. meaning of Jacob Rechnitz’s name, above.
8. Solemn vow / It is from this Hebrew phrase, shevu’at emunim, that the story takes its title; the English title “Betrothed” captures this partially in its etymology “to pledge troth”, to make a vow or oath of faithfulness.
9. Rose / The symbolism of the rose is lost in translation; in Hebrew a rose is shoshanah, the name of our story’s female protagonist.
10. Katharinenhof / A resort outside of Vienna.
Franz Joseph I
10. Emperor / Franz Joseph I (1830–1916), Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
13. There is a time for all… / Ecclesiastes 3:1.
13. Great War / World War I.
14. Sappho / Greek lyric poetess from the island of Lesbos, c. 630–570 BCE.
14. Medea / In Greek mythology, Medea was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis and granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason (of Argonaut fame). She is the central character in Euripides’s play Medea.
14. Yeshivas / Traditional Talmudic academies. (Many of the eastern European Jews who arrived in the Land of Israel during the early 20th century left behind their traditional learning and strict religious lifestyle.)
14. Seven Planets / Classical heavenly bodies visible to the eye and known in the ancient world: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, together with the Sun and Moon; cf. Shabbat 156a for Talmudic astrology and mentions of these seven planets.
16. Intimate du / Conversations between Rechnitz and the Ehrlichs would have taken place in German, which differentiates between the informal du for second-person address and the more formal Sie.
Ahad Ha’am
21. Ahad Ha’Am / Pen-name of Asher Ginsberg (1856–1927), journalist, essayist, and preeminent Zionist thinker; founder of “cultural Zionism” aiming toward the establishment of a “Spiritual Center” as opposed to Herzl’s political Zionism. The pen-name Ahad Ha’Am (taken from Genesis 26:10) means “one of the people”.
Moshe Leib Lilienblum
21. Lilienblum / Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1843–1910), writer and figure in the Jewish Enlightenment movement and leader of the Hovevei Zion in Russia.
21. Ussishkin / Menachem Ussishkin (1863–1941), Russian-born Zionist leader and head of the Jewish National Fund which was responsible for land acquisition in Palestine
22. Jerusalem Talmud / Rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah, composed in the 4th–5th centuries in the Land of Israel; counterpart to the later, and more authoritative, Babylonian Talmud.
22. Collector of donations and tithes / Kashrut supervisor who assured that the various agricultural tithes from produce of the Land of Israel were properly separated.
22. Baron Rothschild / Baron Edmond James de Rothschild (1845–1934), French-born member of the Rothschild banking clan, and a strong supporter of Zionism. His charitable support aided the movement and helped establish various settlements and agricultural endeavors in the Land of Israel.
Baron Rothschild
23. Political Zionists / Followers of Theodor Herzl’s platform at the First Zionist Congress (Basel, 1897), which aimed at establishing a politically and legally assured Jewish homeland in Palestine.
23. Uganda schism / 1903 proposal to create a Jewish homeland in a portion of British East Africa. The plan created a major schism within the larger Zionist movement, drawing support from Herzl, and opposition from Ussishkin and others. Ultimately rejected at the 1905 Seventh Zionist Congress.
23. Zionists of Zion / Nickname for the followers of Ussishkin; opponents to the Uganda Plan, who remained loyal to the notion that Zionism could only be fulfilled in the Land of Israel.
23. Bilu / Zionist movement to promote agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel, founded by students in 1882 in Kharkov.
24. Galicia / Geographic region comprising parts of contemporary southern Poland and western Ukraine, historical home to a large Jewish population (including Agnon himself).
25. Mikveh or Sarona / Mikveh Israel was the first Jewish agricultural school in Israel, established on the eastern outskirts of Jaffa in 1870. Sarona was a German Templer colony founded in 1871, about 4 km. northeast of Jaffa; today a neighborhood of Tel Aviv.
26. Rays of sunrise / Cf. Yoma 28b and Rashi s.v. “Timor”.
29. Sefardim / Descendants of the Spanish Jewish community, expelled from Spain in 1492.
29. Ashkenazim / Jews of the central and eastern European tradition.
Jaffa orange logo from Sarona
29. Yemenite Jews / Members or descendents of the ancient Jewish communities of Yemen (which began emigration to the Land of Israel in 1881). The community follows distinct religious traditions which separate their practices from that of the Ashkenazim and Sefardim. Many Yemenite Jews were known for their skills as craftsmen and artisans, a role they played in the early Settlement.
Yemenite Jew, late 19th c.
29. Thou hast set a boundary… / Psalms 104:9 and cf. Rashi.
30. Rishon LeZion / Coastal farm settlement established to the south of Jaffa in 1882; under Baron Rothschild’s patronage the Carmel-Mizrahi winery was founded there.
30. Old Baron / Apparently this character is a conflation of two historical figures: Moritz Hall (1838–1914) and his son-in-law Baron Plato von Ustinov (1840– 1918), a Russian-born German citizen, and grandfather of the actor Peter Ustinov. Ustinov was the owner of the Hôtel du Parc in Jaffa, renowned for its gardens and talking parrots; presumably the setting for “Betrothed”. Hall, a Jew from Cracow, was a cannon-caster of King Negus Tewodros II of E thiopia, where he was converted to Protestantism. He married an Ethiopian court-lady Katharina née Zander (1850–1932), who was of mixed Ethiopian-German origin. The character of the Old Baron in Jaffa also appears in Agnon’s epic novel of the Second Aliyah, Temol Shilshom (translated by Barbara Harshav as Only Yesterday [Princeton University Press, 2000]). For more on the historical background of these characters see the monograph by Avraham Holtz and Toby Berger Holtz, Moritz Hall: The Old Man of Jaffa (University of Haifa, 2003).
Hôtel du Parc
Moritz Hall (courtesy T. Holtz)
31. Settlement Bank / Jewish Colonial Trust, which provided loans to Jewish farmers and helped promote construction and settlement, was established in London by the second Zionist Congress in 1899 as the financial instrument of the Zionist Organization. Later incorporated as the present-day Bank Leumi.
34. Allah kareem / Arabic: God is the most generous.
34. Japheth / Son of the Biblical Noah (Genesis 5:32); according to folkloric tradition he was the founder and eponym of the ancient city of Jaffa.
35. Nebuchadnezzar / Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 634–562 BCE), king of the Babylonian Empire, responsible for the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and forced exile of the Jewish tribes (also renowned for the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon).
37. Asclepius / Greek god of medicine and healing; son of Apollo.
40. Ilyushin the taxidermist / Walter Lever, this story’s translator, changed this character’s name in order to preserve in English an element of the word-play Ilyushin-Illusion (in chapter 22, p. 57) which is gene
rated from Shoshanah’s misunderstanding or mispronouncing of his name. In Hebrew the character is named Arzef, and appears in a significant, if minor, role in Agnon’s Temol Shilshom – see especially Book II Chapter 7.3 (pp. 241–244 in Only Yesterday) and Book IV Chapter 15.2 (pp. 604–608) – where he is portrayed as a craftsman and scientist fully devoted to his work and research by being fully unencumbered by family life:
Arzef lives alone like the First Adam in the Garden of Eden, with no wife and no sons and no cares and no troubles, among all kinds of livestock and animals and birds and insects and reptiles and snakes and scorpions. He dwells with them in peace, and even when he takes their soul, they don’t demand his blood in exchange, since they enter the great museums of Europe because of him, and professors and scholars flock to his door and give him honorary degrees and money. Arzef doesn’t run after money and doesn’t brag about the honorary degrees. Let those who get all their honor from others brag about them. It’s enough for Arzef to look at his handiwork and know that never in his life has he ruined any creature in the world, on the contrary, he gave a name and remainder to some birds of the Land of Israel who were said to have vanished from the earth” (Only Yesterday, p. 242).
Compare this to the personality of our Dr. Rechnitz and his seaweeds!
It was rumored that Agnon modeled Arzef on Yisrael Aharoni (1882–1946), a Russian-born naturalist, known as the “first Hebrew zoologist”, having discovered and coined Hebrew names for dozens of previously unknown animals, birds, and insects. He emigrated to Jerusalem in 1901, ultimately obtaining an academic post at the Hebrew University. Typically, Agnon neither denied nor confirmed this, see MeAtzmi el Atzmi (Schocken, 2000), p. 468.