On the Gathering of the Agadah

The written Hebrew agadah [lore and legends transmitted in rabbinic texts] is the primary literary form that was dominant for several centuries in the world of unbounded folk and individual creation of the Jewish people.

In its essence, the agadah was not a transient, passing literary phenomenon but a classic creation of the spirit of our people, a creation that bore fruit in its time while the principal remained for generations to come. It is one of the major manifestations of the spirit of the Jewish nation and its members. Consciously and unconsciously, many generations and individuals invested their highest creative powers and spiritual riches; several generations engaged in designing and furbishing it, until it became an entire world in its own right, a marvelous and unique world with its special charm and beauty. It is impossible that such a creation should not possess much of the eternal and universal, which ought to be perpetuated as it is, in its image and likeness, as an exemplary creative achievement for generations to come.

As to content, the agadah contains many opinions among its individual members about the Jewish nation and its national treasures; about eternal and mundane life; about past and future events; about the heroes of the people, the events of their lives and their deeds, their habits and virtues; about human beings and the world; about beliefs and opinions; about life experience and the mysteries of the world (or “the eternal questions,” to use a modern idiom); about “the kingdom of this world” and “the Kingdom of Heaven”; and ever so much more. In the last analysis: there is no field of emotion and intellect—to be sure, of those to which the powers of knowledge and imagination had access in those times—that the agadah did not touch on in some way.

As to form, the agadah comprises almost all of the literary genres that were in vogue among the Jewish people in all these areas in those times: tales of deeds and dialogues, descriptions of things real and imagined, sermons and discourses, fables and witticisms, poetry and songs, hyperbole and nonsense, pearls of wisdom and riddles, and so many more.

In its best examples, the style of the agadah arrived at its own great perfection. [ . . . ]

Whoever wants to know the Jewish people in all these aspects must “turn to the agadah.” This literary genre is large in quantity and quality, many-sided and variegated. It is a component unique to the Jewish people, and for several centuries after the “cessation of prophecy” the spirit of our people and its creative power found expression through it in such a special and original way that the like is not to be found in succeeding generations. [ . . . ]

During the time that the agadah lived and dominated, “scattering” was beneficial for it.¹ The multiplicity of books and collections, once they were popularized among the people, became a sign of strength and blessing. Who cares if you find the same story repeated in multiple places, that the small precious portion was mixed with much filler? This is the way of every living literature in its time: the dearest or most important matters are interpreted in many ways, undergoing many permutations, and they remain popular in the community for a long time. [ . . . ]

But the same scattering and multiplication of books, which was beneficial for the agadah at the time of its living and thriving, now, when its time as the reigning literary form has passed, has become a stumbling block and has led to opposite results. In our days, not every person has access to ancient books, and not everyone is able and willing to dig through the vast heaps that grew into mountains over the generations, in order to find pearls beneath them. Nor can everyone stitch shreds and patches together into a whole garment, or combine scattered broken stones into a building. For its entire history, the agadah, as a free creative form, was like an ownerless field or an abandoned thicket, in which weeds grew up of their own accord. A child of our times, who is accustomed to expect order, method, and the possibility of perfection in his studies, when he enters into this forsaken thicket, will soon not be able to find his hands and feet in it, and in any case the profit from his labors will not be worth the effort. [ . . . ]

The Book of Legends for the Entire People [Sefer ’agadah le-kol ha-‘am]—this title implies that it gives every literate Jew the ability to “go to the agadah” in a direct and proper way, that is to say, a way that enables the reader to grasp each essential matter clearly in its many important aspects, in its general contours and specifics, from its core to its entirety, through access to the authentic primary sources, yet without fruitless squandering of time and effort.

The Jewish reader and student should be able to find in this book all the “excellent agadot that are heard by the whole people” from the treasuries of agadah wherever they are: from the Talmuds, the baraitas, and the midrashim. [ . . . ]

In closing, we should enunciate more generally what we have already said: The Book of Legends in its essence does not have to be a reference book, exhaustively drawing on all the treasuries of agadah; it also does not need to be a “scientific” book in the broad sense, researching and contemplating the agadah with respect to its “genesis” or historical development in time and place and the individuals who contributed to it; still less need it be scientific in the narrow archeological sense. [ . . . ] For the purpose of The Book of Legends, the questions of “when” and “who” are not so important, but rather “what” and “how” in the agadah. This book consists only of certain literary topics in various forms, which combine into one specific form whose name is agadah. All the days of creation of agadah are recognized in the book as one long day, whose name is “the period of agadah,” and all its creators have the same name: “the agadic author.” From this perspective—which is more “popular” or literary than “scientific”—the compilers must review all the agadic material that they have in their hands at the time of gathering and arrangement.