Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam (27 page)

119. Sing out to the Lord in praise / Psalms 147:7.

119. The heavens declare the glory of God… / Psalms 19:2.

119. This people that I have created… / Isaiah 43:21.

119. Letters of the word “heaven” equal numerically to those of “male and female” / According to the
gematriya
method of assigning numerical value to each letter, heaven (
shamayim
) and “male and female” (
zakhar u-nekevah
) both equal 390.

119. Children of Benjamin… daughters of Shiloh / As related in Judges 21, during the period following the battle in Gibeah, when the other Israelite tribes would not allow their daughters to marry sons of the tribe of Benjamin.

119. Temple would be built / The site of the Jerusalem Temple straddles the territory of the Tribe of Benjamin.

119. Amadia / Small, ancient Assyrian and Kurdish town in Iraqi Kurdistan. The town is built on the flat top of a mountain, formerly only accessible by a narrow stairway cut into the rock. Amadia was the birthplace of the 12
th
century false Messiah, David Alroy, who led a revolt against the city but was defeated and killed in the process, as related in Benjamin of Tudela’s near contemporaneous travelogue.

Amadia

120. The case of a person who was passing behind the synagogue / Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3:7.

120. And to Gad he said… / Genesis 33:20.

120. Gad, a troop shall overcome him… / Jacob’s blessing to the tribe of Gad in Genesis 49:19.

120. Which they took up beyond the Jordan / The tribe of Gad was settled on the eastern banks of the River Jordan (see Numbers 32:1–5).

120. Aramaic Targum / An exegetical translation of the Bible into Aramaic by Onkelos (c. 35–120
CE
). The comment appears at Genesis 49:19.

121. Jerusalem Targum / A later translation of the Bible into Aramaic of the Land of Israel, including many interpretive and homiletic passages woven into the translation.

121. Face of a lion… / Cf. Ezekiel 1:10 (the description of the Divine Chariot).

121. High praises of God… two-edged sword… / Cf. Psalms 149:6.

121. Daughters of Israel went out to dance / Cf. Mishnah Ta’anit 4:8.

122.
Kavanim
/ As Gamzu explains, these are “a kind of flat cake which they bake on live coals,” but commentators on the story have alternatively identified Gemulah’s
kavanim
with the kabbalistic notion of
kavanot
(mystical intentions) or with some form of pagan practice.

123. I am looking at the vessel and not what it contains / Inversion of Mishnah Avot 4:20: “Said Rabbi Meir: Look not at the vessel, but at what it contains.”

124. Unto three transgressions of Israel… / Amos 2:6.

124. No man of Israel passes through this world more than two or three times… Even go through a thousand cycles of life / The discussion about the limits to the number of reincarnations of the soul is based on Tikkunei Zohar 32 (76b) and in the 16
th
century
Sefer HaGilgulim
of R. Chaim Vital (chapter 4 at 7a).

124. He commanded it unto the thousandth generation / Psalms 105:8.

125. Georgian Quarter at the Damascus Gate / The Damascus gate is one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City, at the northwestern side of the surrounding city walls. The Georgian Quarter, known in Hebrew as the Eshel Avraham neighborhood, lies immediately outside the gate and was founded by Jewish immigrants from the country of Georgia in the 1890s.

Orange sellers at Damascus Gate (1944)

125. Garmisch / A Bavarian mountain resort town in southern Germany.

126. Minyan / A quorum of ten men necessary to recite parts of the communal prayers and public Torah reading.

127.
Gemeinschaft der Gerechten
/ German for: Society of Justice.

127. Gamal Pasha / Djemal Pasha (1872–1922), Ottoman military leader during World War I.

127. Earthquake / Major earthquake on July 11, 1927, centered in Jericho caused mass damage throughout Mandatory Palestine – including more than 130 deaths and 300 house collapses in Jerusalem alone. Agnon’s home in the center of Jerusalem was damaged, after which he relocated to the Talpiot neighborhood (then a new suburb of southern Jerusalem), where he spent the rest of his life.

Djemal Pasha

129. Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg / Rosenberg (1842–1919) was a prominent anti-Zionist leader, who served as rabbi from 1884 in the town of Innsdorf (or Unsdorf), which is known today as Huncovce, northern Slovakia.

1927 earthquake, Old City of Jerusalem

131. Amrami / Amram was the father of Moses (Exodus 6:20).

132. To the place where a man is summoned… / Cf. Sukkah 53a.

132. I came once to a certain village… / The description of Gamzu’s journeys have parallels in the travelogue of Yaakov HaLevi Saphir’s
Even Sappir
(2 vols., 1866 and 1874), who travelled to Yemen in search of the lost tribes. (This source was identified by Michal Oron, “Kabbalistic Symbols and Motifs in
Edo and Enam
” [in Hebrew] in
BaSeminar
[1977]). Agnon’s copies of Saphir’s books are still in the collection of the Agnon House library.