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November 12, 2024

The Search for the Rabbinic Mentor of the Master of Modern Hebrew Fiction

S.Y. Agnon and Samuel Shraga Feivel Bialoblocki.

In his vast oeuvre, the great Hebrew writer S.Y. Agnon only refers to one person as “my teacher and rabbi”—an honorific generally reserved for a disciple describing his mentor—and that is Samuel Shraga Feivel Bialoblocki, a relatively obscure rabbi and professor of Talmud. Agnon employed Bialoblocki at various points to proofread his work and check his citations of rabbinic texts. Aviad Hacohen tries to separate the facts about this rabbi, who was born sometime around 1890, from the Agnonian myths:

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November 12, 2024

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