Jewish history and storytelling traditions

¶ … Shmuel Agnon's Only Yesterday, the story tells a simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya which are the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. Only Yesterday rapidly became documented as a massive work of world literature. This classic novel also moves the reader in a charming network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes.

With that in mind, as the reader becomes more engaged with the book, they will find the main character, young Isaac Kumer who is seduced by Zionist slogans, imagines the Land of Israel filled with the financial, social, and erotic chances that were deprived by him. Kumer was the son of an impoverished shopkeeper who lived in Poland.

However, when he arrives in Israel, he could not find the agricultural labor that he expected. Instead Kumer obtains house-painting jobs as he moves from worldly, Zionist Jaffa, where the ideological passion and sexual freedom are unfamiliar to him. While some of his Zionist friends converted to become capitalists, which means they were successful merchants, his own life stayed purposeless and impecunious in a land torn between idealism and practicality, which is also a place that is at once homeland and diasporas. Eventually he marries a religious woman in Jerusalem only after his worldly girlfriend in Jaffa rejects him that leaves his heart broken. Therefore, this book discusses many meanings, which can change a person's life

As the book continues to explore Kumer's adventures and disappointments in his life, the reader learns that he always led astray by circumstances. He always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be, and the audience will ask the question why. The manuscript ascends to Surrealist-Kafkaesque declines when Kumer drips paint on a stray dog, in a playful manner writing "Crazy Dog" on his back. Unfortunately, this caused panic wherever he roams; therefore, the dog takes over the story. The dog's part does not last that long since continuing harassment went on for so long without understanding why he goes mad and bites Kumer. The dog has been understood as everything from the personification of Exile to a daemonic strength, and turns out to be an unforgettable character in a manuscript about the bereavement of God, the dishonesty of dialogue, the authority of concealed eroticism, and the providence of a people portrayed all its shadows and assurances. Only Yesterday sheds light on the good and the evil in life that people have to encounter by decisions that may influence them which can have a major impact on the future.