Midrash and Marginality: The "ʿAgunot" of S. Y. Agnon and Devorah Baron

If intertextuality, the evocation and activation of earlier texts within a given text, is a general condition of all literature, radical intertextuality, in which the earlier text is not only engaged but ironized or undermined, is particularly characteristic of modern Hebrew belletristic writing. During the renascence of Hebrew literature in the first decades of the last century, writers mined the cultural legacy for materials whereby to construct a modern language and literature. This collective endeavor generated authorial "conversations" around the Jewish cultural patrimony. Thus, for example, in Agnon's story, [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="01i" /] ( ʿAgunot ), and Baron's story, [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="02i" /] ( ʿAgunah ), each writer treats the theme of the "abandoned wife" through the manipulation of midrashic material. An ʿagunah is a married woman who is legally barred from marrying again, either because her husband has failed or refused to give her a divorce, or because he has disappeared leaving behind no conclusive evidence of his death. Within the midrashic tradition, this condition of [inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="03i" /] ( ʿaginut ) has been extended allegorically to describe the estrangement of the Jewish people in exile from the love and protection of their God. Both Agnon and Baron creatively engage this interpretation in their stories, and the specific manner in which each author chooses to de-allegorize traditional midrash—and the ways in which Baron's story may be read as a response to Agnon's—are the central concerns of this study. While this article focuses on Baron's work, attention is also devoted to those elements in Agnon's story from which Baron departs in her piece: in particular, how Agnon converts ʿaginut into an abstracted condition that applies to all mismatched souls irrespective of gender. Baron, in contrast, offers a different reading, one that assigns ʿaginut solely to the domain of women as a metaphor or metonymy for their oppression. The article considers the intertextual relationship between the two stories as well as the intersection of the lives of the authors. The discussion affords as well an opportunity to examine Baron's proto-feminist message, a message that has of late sparked increased fascination with her life and brought her work newfound attention as attempts are made to recover female, modernist forebears.