A webinar on the legacy of Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon and how "Agunot" remains relevant today.
Thursday, November 12, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PMWebinar
12:00 PM Pacific / 3:00 PM Eastern / 20:00 UK / 22:00 Israel
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Organized by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Comparative Literature and the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.
About the Event
In “Agunot” (Abandoned Wives, 1908), the astonishing first story he published in Palestine, Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon uses the intertwined stories of lovers separated by conflicting desires and obligations to explore the tensions between tradition and modernity, cultural and political Zionism, and the Land of Israel and the Diaspora. Through recurring images of threads, fabric, and irresolutely broken bonds, the story presents Jewish and Zionist continuity as both vulnerable and resilient, open to ongoing creative reinterpretation. Its unresolved ending leaves readers to grapple with the interpretive questions it raises. These questions remain urgent today, as Israel continues to negotiate its Jewish and secular identities, its relationship with the Diaspora, and the implications of state rabbinical control over marriage and divorce.
About the Speaker
Rabbi Dr. Wendy Zierler was born in Sarnia, Ontario, grew up in Toronto, and currently lives in New York, where she is the Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at Hebrew Union College. Prior to joining HUC-JIR, she was a Research Fellow in the English Department of the University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. and her M.A. from Princeton University, her B.A. from Stern College of Yeshiva University, and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. In June 2021, she received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva Maharat. Her most recent book, Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry (Jewish Publication Society), was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. She is the author, previously, of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (SUNY Press, also a National Jewish Book Award finalist, 2017), And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing (Wayne State UP, 2004), and many articles in the fields of Jewish literature and Jewish Gender Studies. With historian Carole Balin, she edited Behikansi atah, a collection of the trailblazing Hebrew writings of Hava Shapiro 1878-1943 (Resling Press, 2008). Her English translation of Shapiro’s writings, To Tread on New Ground: Selected Writings of Hava Shapiro, also co-edited with Carole Balin, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2014. She also co-edited two other books, These Truths We Hold: Judaism in an Age of Truthiness (with HUC colleague Joshua Garroway, HUC Press 2022) and Building A City: Writings on Agnon’s Buczacz in Memory of Alan Mintz (with Sheila Jelen, Indiana University Press, 2023). In 2017, she was appointed Co-Editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, a leading scholarly journal in the field of Jewish Literature. More recently, she served as a consultant in the writers’ room of the Fox prime time television show The Faithful, a dramatization of the lives of biblical women, which began airing in March 2026. She is married to Daniel Feit and has three adult children.
Richard Hecht (moderator) is Professor Emeritus at UCSB Department of Religious Studies. Professor Hecht was trained as a historian of religions under the influence of Mircea Eliade through his teacher at UCLA Kees W. Bolle. He has become increasingly interested in the deep contextualization of religion in its lived environments and most centrally the intersections of religion, politics, and culture. His work is comparative and multidisciplinary, both of which are essential, in his opinion, to the larger study of religion.
DISCLAIMER: The views or opinions of our guest speakers and the content of their presentations do not necessarily reflect the views of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Hosting speakers does not constitute an endorsement of the speaker's views or opinions.