A Book that Was Lost and Other Stories.

S. Y. Agnon, edited with introductions by Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman Schocken Books, $27.50, 436 pp.

This collection of short stories by Nobel Prize-winner S. Y. Agnon presents a world remote to most readers. Many of the stories are folk tales in which the late Israeli writer conveys both his reverence for and ambivalence toward the Orthodox Jewish tradition that shaped his imagination. His childhood recollections of early twentieth century Jewish life in Hungary provide the spiritual context for his experience of modern Israeli society. His style, often grounded in references to biblical and rabbinical texts, can feel heavyhanded for a postmodernist. Still, the characters' conflicts with their own desires also remind us of how we are imprisoned and liberated by our own deeply held modern attitudes and beliefs.

The pleasure in reading these stories comes from their humor and irony. The stories deftly observe how the religious context of an orthodox tradition converges with individual experience. One hears in the first autobiographical recollections as well as in the more contemporary stories, the voice of a narrator charmed by the biblical interpretations of a tradition. At the same time, the narrator gently parodies the moral certainty that can result from an exclusive reliance on an encyclopedic knowledge of a tradition. Agnon combines a seeming childlike innocence, the sophisticated understanding of a rabbinical scholar, and the urbane wit of a seasoned artist.

In stories such as "Agunot," "A Book that Was Lost," and "The Sign," characters are often trapped within a tragicomic situation and exiled not so much from a place but from their deeper sources of emotional and spiritual fulfillment. In the book's first story, "Agunot," the daughter of a wealthy man about to enter an arranged marriage with a young rabbi finds herself in love with the craftsman her father hired to make the ark for the wedding. In this and other stories framed in the idealized context of a folk tale, Agnon always subverts our expectations. These stories, so embedded in a religious tradition, do not easily realize the psychological realism of some of his novels, particularly his later novel Shira. The conflicts in the stories exist not between characters but more between the narrator's sense of an outer and inner life, where the inner life is driven by desires, premonitions, and dreams Agnon captures human instincts i memorable ways. While not all the stories are couched in a biblical language "Agunot" sets a pattern. In Hebrew "Agunot means "Souls in Limbo." The story develops around certain themes of the Song of Songs, where the relation of the Holy One to Israel is likened to the of a devoted and beloved. In Agnon's story, the Holy One is humorously portrayed as both a devoted parent and as a weaver of the prayer shawl of deeds.

The story begins, "A thread of grace is spun and drawn out of the deeds of Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, in His glory, sits and weaves ... a tallit for Israel to deck herself in ... Radiant in the light of her beauty ... There are times when some hindrance creeps in and snaps a thread in the loom."

The prayer shawl emerges as a metaphor associated with what can protect and unravel meaning in our lives. The daughter, characterized as "not knowing her own heart," is lured by the song of the ark craftsman, Ben Uri. The ironic and playful parallels between the craftsman and the Holy One making the prayer shawl enhance the psychological complexity of the daughter's attraction to one who cannot be possessed. Her sweet and, docile nature is shattered when she smites the ark after the "Evil one has told her that the ark separates her from her beloved." With this action, the focus of the story shifts to her intended bridegroom, a young rabbi who is now seen as victim. The young rabbi's prophetic dream of the craftsman brings him to a self-awakening and exile. The beauty of this story hinges on the way vulnerable characters are transformed by growing self-awareness.

The translators' commentaries, which include a guide to structure and religious allusions, tend to oversimplify the emotional texture of these tales. These stories should be read in light of Agnon's scholarly books, Days of Awe (1965) and Present at Sinai.

Biblical scholarship has been vital to shaping Agnon's identity as a writer. For example, in the title story, "A Book that Was Lost," the narrator discovers a book by one of his favorite rabbinic scholars. Why and how the book gets published and sent to Jerusalem is explained. It becomes clear that sending the book involves letting go. "There are things you do out of love, but nevertheless you do not hasten to complete them." The book is likened to a kite that a child holds "as long as it stays in his hand, it belongs to him, but when he lets it fly, it disappears high in the sky and he is "left empty-handed." The book serves as a metaphor for a way of perceiving the world that is slowly vanishing.

The last story, "The Sign," is focused on a sense of place. Agnon's home in Israel was destroyed in 1929 by an Arab invasion. Here he writes about exile and homelessness in a land he once viewed as a refuge. Boundaries between his life in Israel and his past in Eastern Europe slip away as the narrator's mystical vision allows him to see and hear the words of a medieval Jewish poet, Solomon Ibn Cabirol. Gabirol's poetry keeps the past alive for the narrator, who is poised between dissolution of one world and emerging conflicts of another.

At times Agnon speaks as the romantic, and in other instances he shows how easily we forget how dislocation and exile assume the guises of home.

Carolyn Cohen writes about literature and film. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.