This talk explores S. Y. Agnon’s In the Heart of the Seas, often read as a story of Jewish longing for and return to the Land of Israel. One of the novella’s central literary devices is its rich network of allusions to religious, literary, and philosophical texts. What new possibilities emerge when we consider the full range of sources on which Agnon draws—not only modern Hebrew literature, but also the Bible, the Talmud, Jewish commentary, Hasidic tales, Christian sermons, European legends, contemporary English, French and German literature, and more?

Through these references, Agnon complicates the idea of a simple, redemptive homecoming. Written between 1924 and 1934, the novella reflects on the harsh realities of its time: the rise of fascism in Europe, growing international tensions, and escalating anti-Jewish discrimination, culminating in the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. It also reflects the tensions surrounding British policy in Mandatory Palestine, particularly the uncertainty surrounding the territory’s future and the meaning of the promise that it would serve as a “national home for the Jewish people.” Agnon uses the novella to explore what relationship Jewish literary tradition—and contemporary Hebrew literature in particular—bears to these historical realities.

The talk concludes by considering the novella’s reflections on writing and reading. Does literature simply console its readers, or can it also reshape inherited religious stories and encourage new forms of thought and action?

Shai encourages you to read the novella beforehand to get the most out of the talk, although it is not a prerequisite.

In collaboration with ACJC (Monash’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation)

About the Guest Speaker:

Shai Ginsburg is Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. His research focuses on modern Hebrew literature, Israeli cinema, Jewish intellectual history, literary theory, and game studies. He is the author of Rhetoric and Nation: The Formation of Hebrew National Culture, 1880–1990 and coeditor of Jews and the Ends of Theory and Bounded Mind and Soul: Russia and Israel, 1880–2010. His current work explores the emergence of Hebrew speech at the turn of the twentieth century