הגויה של תשעה באב

[hatam_soferet]

MarGavriel points us to a little Agnon story. A story appropriate for the season:
סיפר לי ר’ אהרן פריימן ז”ל משמו של ר’ אליהו פלנסר ז”ל. ר’ איציק אייכל וחבריו מצאו להם נכרית אחת שבישלה להם לתשעה באב. שבאותו הדור קשה היה ליהודי בברלין למצוא תבשיל בתשעה באב. היו קוראים לאותה נוכרית הגויה של תשעה באב. Aaron Freiman, of blessed memory, told me the

Comments

[margavriel]

Sarit compares the story in IV Ezra, The central climax of the book is a vision that Ezra has of a woman lamenting over the death of her only son. Ezra consoles the woman by promising her son’s resurrection, and also scolds her for her obsession with her personal problems when “Zion the mother of us all” has much more for which to mourn. Ezra urges: “…keep your grief to yourself and bear gallantly your calamities, for if you accept as right the verdict of God, you will get back your son in his time and be highly extolled among women.”[3] As soon as Ezra imparts this message to the woman, the woman transforms into the glorified city of Zion, which comforts Ezra and gives him hope and strength for the future. It is also at this point that Ezra realizes that the advice he gave to the woman should be applied to himself as well, and thus Ezra stops complaining about God and realizes that his sorrow is also personal and individual.

The parallel to Agnon is that the grief associated with the woman leads the main character to go back to mourning Jerusalem. Presumably, the "inversion" is that in one case, the woman turns out to actually be Mother Zion, whereas in the other case, she's just a dead gentile servant-woman. Or what?

[jonbaker]

2 Esdras 9:38 through the end of Ch. 10.

[jonbaker]

Agnon Agonistes.

Hey, you're in WH. Do you know an older family (probably in their 70s) named Israel & Esther Chachkes in WH? I was friend with their son G. in elementary school from WH; Agnon's real name was Czazkes, and yes, Agnon was G's uncle or something.

I think they're on FtWash in the 180s.

[margavriel]

Never met them, but that's cool!

Agnon used to invite my grandmother (and grandfather?) over for tea at his house, in the mid-to-late 1940s.