S.Y. Agnon’s Secret Rabbi

Anyone even slightly familiar with the life of the writer S.Y. Agnon knows that, of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of scholars he encountered throughout his life, only one is referred to by him as “my teacher and master” (mori ve-rabi): Rabbi professor Samuel Shraga Feivel Bialoblocki. When and why did “Samuel A”—S.Y. Agnon—choose “Samuel B” (in both senses), Samuel Bialoblocki, a modest and diminutive Lithuanian sage, or, as Agnon affectionately referred to him, drawing from an ancient tannaitic figure, “Samuel the Small (or “Little Samuel”)—a man without a beard or any other prominent rabbinic characteristic, to be his “mentor and teacher”? How did this almost unknown figure, certainly to most of the public in Israel and even to Torah scholars, become someone Agnon, who was not known for lavishing praise on others, exalted as “my teacher and master”?

Yet, anyone familiar with the garden of illusions in which Agnon lived all his life knows that behind these seemingly innocent and charming descriptions lie much deeper and more complex layers, not immediately visible upon first glance.

The biographical details about Bialoblocki are rather sparse, and some remain unclear. Even his exact birth date has not been definitively established. A memorial volume dedicated to him claims that he was born on the round date of May 5, 1888, citing as a source “according to the records of the University of Giessen.” However, in a record from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a later birth date, also round, is given: June 6, 1888 (27 Sivan 5648). Yet in the list of members of the Hebrew Language Committee, his birth year is listed as 1891 (5651).

This uncertainty regarding Bialoblocki’s exact birth date is also reflected on his tombstone, the inscription of which was composed by Agnon. Unlike the common practice, neither his exact birth date is mentioned; instead, it simply states that he passed away “in the seventieth year of his life,” supporting the later birth year. This is also corroborated by the obituary published by Bar-Ilan University in the newspaper two days after his death, announcing the funeral arrangements.

From early childhood, Bialoblocki was known as “the prodigy of Pilvishki,” after the small town in Lithuania where he was born. After studying in Ponevezh under Rabbi Yitzchak (Itzele) of Ponevezh, he went on to study in Germany at the University of Giessen, where he completed his doctoral dissertation in 1928. His dissertation focused on the laws of marriage in Judaism and Islam, and in the introduction, Bialoblocki explored the possible influence of Jewish family law on the Hadith, the oral tradition of Islam. He also wrote a substantial entry on this subject for the Encyclopedia Judaica that was published by the Jewish Eshkol Publishing house (Berlin, 1928-34).

After the Nazis rose to power, Bialoblocki returned to Lithuania to visit his mother. He then immigrated to Palestine in 1939. From 1946 until his death, he was a member of the Hebrew Language Committee, and in 1956, following the establishment of Bar-Ilan University and through the persistent efforts of Agnon, he was appointed head of the Talmud department and as the first chairman of the faculty senate. His research and writings in Hebrew and German were relatively few and were collected posthumously in the book Em La-Masoret, published by the university.

Agnon’s eulogy for Bialoblocki, first printed in Haaretz (Feb. 18, 1960) and later included in his book Me-Atzmi el Atzmi, was titled “My Teacher and Master, the Genius Rabbi Samuel Bialoblocki.” There, he describes the beginning of their acquaintance:

One summer day, I entered the bookshop of Reb Michel Rabinowitz, of blessed memory. Surely there are some who remember the man and his shop. The shop was open, as though not for business but more for Torah scholars to engage in pilpul. When I entered, I found the shop filled with scholars, sparks of fire emanating from their mouths, and a new person I had never seen before was standing there, studying a book. One scholar said, “We must check in the Rif.” He raised his head from his book and said, “The language of the Rif is as follows,” and immediately recited the words of the Rif by heart. Another scholar said, “Let’s examine Maimonides.” He responded, “Maimonides does not mention this law.” Another jumped in and said, “There is a Talmud in Bava Batra, and Rabbeinu Gershom says ...” He smiled and said, “From the language of Rabbeinu Gershom, it is clear that you have misunderstood,” and immediately recited the words by heart. That man was Rabbi Samuel Bialoblocki. And still, he did not make an impression on me. In Jerusalem, if we paid attention to all the sharp and knowledgeable ones, we would never stop marveling.

“And still, he did not make an impression on me,” Agnon emphasizes. Later, he describes how they “drew closer to one another.” At the suggestion of his friend, Reb Michel Rabinowitz, Agnon employed Bialoblocki to check the sources for his work Days of Awe. The rabbi accepted the task. “I saw that he took pleasure in the book,” Agnon says with evident satisfaction.

I said to him, “Work with me on it.” He replied, “Your book is already complete, but if you wish, I am willing to go over it with you.” After his words, I felt encouraged, and I proofread the book from beginning to end, knowing that if he were to proofread it, he would not dwell on matters I could correct myself. And as I went through the book, I kept him in mind. It was he who helped me clarify every matter to the best of my understanding. A few days later, he returned and reviewed the versions, corrected them according to precise manuscripts, and added several sections I wrote under his direction, as I mentioned at the beginning of the book. When he saw that I had written about him as “the true genius,” he asked me to remove the word “true.”

Agnon, being Agnon, eulogizes Bialoblocki but also spends much time praising himself:

During those days when my book was published, he traveled to Lithuania to visit his mother, may she rest in peace. In every letter he wrote to me from there, he mentioned the praise the book received from the great rabbis of Lithuania he visited, especially from Rabbi A.D. Shapiro of Kovno, may he rest in peace. I am not telling this to aggrandize my own name, but to highlight his character—he mentioned the passages that others praised but not a single passage I added based on his suggestions. After two or three months, he returned to Jerusalem.

Agnon’s work Days of Awe was first published in 1938, with a second edition in 1939 and a third, revised edition in 1946. Dan Laor notes in his Agnon’s Life that the initiative to prepare the book came from Moshe Spitzer, the chief editor at Schocken Publishing House, and it captivated Agnon, who may have sought to compete with the anthological works of Chaim Nachman Bialik and Martin Buber, both of whom he admired. However, being deeply immersed in writing new stories, the publication of the Days of Awe anthology was delayed. According to Agnon’s own testimony, although he worked on it “sixteen hours a day, from evening until morning” for about two and a half years—beginning in early 1935 and continuing until mid-1937, when the final manuscript was sent for typesetting—progress was slow.

By February 1936, Agnon had already sent portions of the book to Schocken for review, and by the end of July that year, he informed Spitzer that the work was completed. Despite compiling various sources into nearly 1,000 pages, Agnon was not satisfied with the result, fearing it might not be good enough. According to his testimony, it was Rabinowitz who suggested that Agnon enlist the help of the Torah scholar Rabbi Samuel Bialoblocki for refining, proofreading, and correcting errors, and Agnon, as he described, “jumped at the opportunity.” However, if Bialoblocki, according to his biographers, only immigrated to Palestine in 1939, how could Agnon have met him at Rabinowitz’s shop in 1936? And how could the two have strolled “every Shabbat” to the Western Wall?

According to these accounts, it seems that Bialoblocki did not immigrate to Palestine only in 1939, as stated by his biographers, but rather as early as 1935 at the latest. This would explain how Agnon could have met him “one summer day” at the end of that year in Rabinowitz’s bookshop. Further support for this surmise can be found in a copy of the agreement between them, discovered in Agnon’s archive at the National Library of Israel, signed in Jerusalem and dated Aug. 10, 1936. In the agreement, Bialoblocki committed to assisting Agnon in his work two days a week for one year, in exchange for a monthly salary of 20 Palestine pounds. The hierarchy between them is clear: “Mr. Agnon employs Dr. Bialoblocki as an assistant for his literary works.”

Although the agreement stipulated two workdays per week and that “Dr. Bialoblocki is free to manage his own work schedule besides this,” the drafter of the agreement (was it attorney Moshe Zmora, who later became the first president of Israel’s Supreme Court and was Sh.Z. Schocken’s lawyer in Jerusalem?) added an additional clause stating that “Dr. Bialoblocki is obligated to dedicate all his efforts and time to the aforementioned work, and therefore may not accept any other position offered to him by any party, without Mr. Agnon’s explicit consent. It is known to Mr. Agnon that Dr. Bialoblocki gives evening lectures in Tel Aviv twice a week, and he hereby explicitly agrees to the continuation of this activity.”

The agreement also explicitly stated that “Mr. Agnon will request from Schocken Publishing House to include Dr. Bialoblocki’s name as a second author on the title pages of the books” and that he would appear on the title page as a “co-author.” However, it seems Agnon did not make significant efforts to fulfill this part of the agreement, and he remained the sole author of the book. Bialoblocki’s name was not mentioned on the title page as a second author, nor even as an “assistant” to the author, not even in smaller print. Agnon merely included a brief acknowledgment to “Mr. Bialoblocki,” alongside others, in the book’s preface: “To all the scholars and rabbis who helped me with good advice, and especially to the great Rabbi Samuel Bialoblocki, who worked with me, reviewed the book from beginning to end, enlightened me in halakhah, checked the versions, and added several sections to the book. With his vast knowledge of the entire corpus of Torah, he helped me complete the book. May God be with him to learn and teach, and to benefit many with his Torah.” Fourteen years later, Agnon dedicated the story “Within My City,” which describes his hometown of Buczacz, “to my Rabbi and friend Samuel Bialoblocki, may the Lord protect and preserve him.” Even here, though, Bialoblocki is referred to only as “my Rabbi and friend,” not “my teacher and master.”

It seems that the first time Agnon referred to Rabbi Samuel Bialoblocki as “my teacher and master” was only about 15 years later, in 1958, when Agnon was around 70 years old. By that time, Bialoblocki was already suffering from illness and great pain, which persisted until his death about a year and a half later.

In a speech given on Dec. 10, 1958, when Agnon was awarded the title of “fellow” at Bar-Ilan University, he recommended to the university’s founder, Dr. Pinkhos Churgin, two teachers whom, in his words, “any university would be proud to have.” One was the literary scholar and leading critic of Agnon’s work, Dr. Baruch Kurzweil, and the other, the first on Agnon’s list, was “Dr. Samuel Bialoblocki, who knows the two Talmuds and their commentaries, and the commentaries on the commentaries, word for word, as well as Maimonides and his commentators, and the greatest halakhic decisors … I say this sincerely: out of my great love for my teacher and master, the genius Rabbi Samuel, I am unfit to testify.” Perhaps through this, Agnon sought to atone for his treatment of this great Torah scholar, who remained solitary and childless all his life, and despite their agreement, Agnon omitted his name from the title page of Days of Awe.

This process of atonement seemingly began a few years earlier when Agnon pressured Churgin to secure a teaching position for Bialoblocki and appoint him as the head of the Talmud department at the newly established university. When Agnon later published his story “Within My City” in the first volume of the Writers’ Association anthology, this time under the title “The City and Its Fullness,” it was already 1960. The 21 chapters of memories of Buczacz, reprinted once again, this time only after Bialoblocki had passed away, were dedicated by Agnon “to the memory of my teacher and master.”

On a personal level, the life of Bialoblocki reads like a walking tragedy. He never married nor had children, did not have the privilege of teaching many students or serving in a rabbinic position, and, in Agnon’s words, following the sages, lived “in asceticism and isolation unparalleled, dwelling without goodness or joy” (Me-Atzmi el Atzmi), and for many years “even his livelihood was meager. He barely found enough for his sustenance.”

The Torah of truth was in his mouth, and the fountain of wisdom, all his words were integrity and righteousness. His ways of life and humble justice adorned his soul. And though he did not experience goodness in his days, his pure soul delights on high, alongside the sages of the world, the joy of every generation, in the heavenly academy of counsel and wisdom.

Without a reliable source of income, Bialoblocki was eventually forced to move from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to manage the business of one of his relatives who had fallen ill and sought a replacement. He took residence at 59 Rothschild Blvd. in Tel Aviv, not far from the company offices (located at 30 Rothschild Blvd.), and he established his place of prayer at the nearby small communal synagogue named after Rabbi Shlomo Aronson, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, which was located at 72 Rothschild Blvd.

Agnon tried to show kindness to this Torah scholar and help him in various ways as Bialoblocki’s physical condition worsened. When Agnon was invited to a festive event held on the night of Shabbat, Nov. 27, 1959, at the ZOA House (Beit Ziyonei America) in Tel Aviv, to publicly celebrate “Agnon Month,” a cultural initiative launched by Minister of Education Zalman Aran, Agnon decided to stay at Bialoblocki’s home on Rothschild Boulevard. The host was already very ill, and it seems that Agnon, sensing that the days of his “teacher and master” were numbered, sought to alleviate his loneliness, sorrow, and pain.

Bialoblocki was buried on the day of his passing, in the early afternoon of Friday, the eve of Shabbat, 29th Tevet 5720 (Jan. 29, 1960). The funeral procession departed for the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery from the Assuta Hospital, where he was eulogized by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council of Israel and editor of the Talmudic Encyclopedia. In the absence of close family members, Agnon recited the Kaddish for the elevation of his soul and performed the tearing ritual, keriah, for him, in accordance with Jewish custom. At the cemetery, additional eulogies were delivered by Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv-Yafo (and later chief rabbi of Israel), professor Baruch Kurzweil, Minister of Welfare Dr. Yosef Burg, Bar-Ilan University Director Dr. Tuvia Bar-Ilan, and Dr. Benjamin de Vries from the Talmud department where Bialoblocki had taught.

Bialoblocki’s literary estate was entrusted to Agnon, who also composed the inscription on his gravestone. The headstone reads: “Here lies the body of our teacher and master, the genius Rabbi Samuel Shraga Bialoblocki, of blessed memory, Professor at Bar-Ilan University and Head of the Talmud Department.” On the base of the stone, additional words of praise were inscribed, along with a hint of his tragic life, also written by Agnon:

The Torah of truth was in his mouth, and the fountain of wisdom, all his words were integrity and righteousness. His ways of life and humble justice adorned his soul. And though he did not experience goodness in his days, his pure soul delights on high, alongside the sages of the world, the joy of every generation, in the heavenly academy of counsel and wisdom. He passed to the world to come in the seventieth year of his life, on the eve of Friday, Parashat Va’era, 29 Tevet 5720 [Jan. 29, 1960].

Agnon placed great significance on this inscription. On the day of the unveiling of the gravestone, one year after Bialoblocki’s passing, Agnon delivered a speech at the gravesite, offering an interpretation of the inscription. After Haaretz published (March 18, 1960) Agnon’s essay, “My Teacher and Master, the Genius Rabbi Samuel Bialoblocki,” Mrs. Sarah Herzog, widow of Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Halevi Herzog (the mother of Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog, and grandmother of the current president), wrote the following letter to Agnon:

To my esteemed and exalted honoree, the literary genius, R’ S.Y. Agnon, may he live long. I received the deeply moving essay that appeared in Haaretz about the late Rabbi Bialoblocki, of blessed memory, which you so kindly sent me. I read it with great attention, and my eyes welled with tears as I mourned with you the loss of a great genius in Torah and wisdom, and a noble soul whose personal life was wholly dedicated to the public good. I remember that when the Rabbi [Issac Herzog], of blessed memory, would speak of this individual, he would always highlight his vast knowledge and exceptional qualities. The Rabbi was one of the many who greatly respected Rabbi Bialoblocki, and it is truly heartbreaking to witness the loss of such great individuals in such a short span of time. It seems that lately, we have experienced a particular calamity, as we have suddenly been orphaned from several great and prominent figures, each in their field and generation. Who can replace them! May it be God’s will that we hear only good news, foremost the great tidings of the complete redemption of Israel. Amen, Amen. With deep friendship and great respect, and warm regards to you and your dear wife, Sarah Herzog.