SHMUEL YOSEF AGNON

When I first began to combine letters other than Hebrew, I read every book in German that came my way, and from these I certainly received according to the nature of my soul.

I have also written a book about the Giving of the Torah, and a book on the Days of Awe, and a book on the books of Israel that have been written since the day the Torah was given to Israel.

If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after.

The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital.

After all my possessions had been burned, God gave me the wisdom to return to Jerusalem.

As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile.

At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands. As I did not find work, I sought my livelihood elsewhere.

Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing.

Through these offices it was my privilege to get to know almost every Jewish person, and those whom I did not come to know through these offices I came to know through love and a desire to know my brethren, the members of my people.

Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.

But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.

The beginnings of my studies also came to me from my father, as well as from the Rabbinical Judge of our town. But they were preceded by three tutors under whom I studied, one after the other, from the time I was three and a half till I turned eight and a half.

For myself, I am very small indeed in my own eyes.

I returned to Jerusalem, and it is by virtue of Jerusalem that I have written all that God has put into my heart and into my pen.

I was five years old when I wrote my first song. It was out of longing for my father that I wrote it.

Our days on earth are like a shadow, and the time of our affliction is the length of our days.

If we breathe the scent of goodly grass, the fragrance of spices, the aroma of good fruits, we pronounce a blessing over the pleasure.

People's talk and the stories they tell have been engraved on my heart, and some of them have flown into my pen.

If I am proud of anything, it is that I have been granted the privilege of living in the land which God promised our forefathers to give us, as it is written.

Who were my mentors in poetry and literature? This is a matter of opinion. Some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read. And what is my opinion? From whom did I receive nurture? Not every man remembers the name of the cow which supplied him with each drop of milk he has drunk.

I belong to the tribe of Levi.

Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing. If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after. If we breathe the scent of goodly grass, the fragrance of spices, the aroma of good fruits, we pronounce a blessing over the pleasure. The same applies to pleasures of the sight. And the same applies to pleasures of the ear.

Through a historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities in the diaspora. But I always deemed myself a child of Jerusalem, one who is in reality a native of Jerusalem.